9458081 Eom This project is directed both at studying fundamental materials science phenomena of oxides to gain atomic-level understanding of these materials, and at exploring their utilization in advanced integrated microelectronic, optical and magnetic devices. Our approach utilizes a UHV-compatible versatile thin film deposition system which will be used to grow epitaxial heterostructures. This system will combine 90o off-axis sputtering, on-axis sputtering, laser ablation, evaporation, and etching in one chamber, and will also allow in situ deposition and patterning of various types of structures. %%% Oxide materials possess an enormous range of properties and can be utilized for a wide variety of applications involving superconductors, dielectrics, ferroelectrics, ferromagnetics, and nonlinear optics components. The requirement by many advanced devices for epitaxial multilayers with such mixed properties can potentially be achieved with oxide thin film heterostructures. This study will provide a guideline for the design of oxide multilayer device structures and will also stimulate research into new oxide materials. An important feature of this research project is the training of graduate and undergraduate students in a fundamentally and technologically significant area of materials and processing research. ***
