Atomic and electronic structure of the ferroelectric BaTiO ₃/Ge(001) interface

In this study, we demonstrate the epitaxial growth of BaTiO₃ on Ge(001) by molecular beam epitaxy using a thin Zintl template buffer layer. A combination of density functional theory, atomic-resolution electron microscopy and in situ photoemission spectroscopy is used to investigate the electronic properties and atomic structure of the BaTiO₃/Ge interface. Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron micrographs reveal that the Ge(001) 2 × 1 surface reconstruction remains intact during the subsequent BaTiO₃ growth, thereby enabling a choice to be made between several theoretically predicted interface structures. The measured valence band offset of 2.7 eV matches well with the theoretical value of 2.5 eV based on the model structure for an in-plane-polarized interface. The agreement between the calculated and measured band offsets, which are highly sensitive to the detailed atomic arrangement, indicates that the most likely BaTiO₃/Ge(001) interface structure has been identified.