Misfit dislocations in highly mismatched oxide interfaces, an X‐ray diffraction study

We present here a detailed study describing the strain relaxation mechanisms occurring in the highly mismatched ZrO 2 /MgO system. Especially, we show using reciprocal space mapping that the ZrO 2 islands epitaxially grown on the MgO substrate are fully relaxed implying the formation of misfit dislocations at the interface. Furthermore, an analysis of transverse scans performed through symmetrical ZrO 2 reflections for several azimuthal positions of the sample lets us conclude that dislocations form a square network parallel to ZrO 2 cell axes. Finally, an accurate analysis of the diffraction data evidences the existence of two subsets of misfit dislocations.

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