Low Dimensional Ti-Oxide Based Structures : Thin Film Surfaces of SrTiO3 and TiO2

Transition metal oxides (TMO) form altogether a very wide class of materials, which has attracted since decades the attention for showing highly diversified and unusual electronic properties. The building blocks of TMO are typically octahedral structures (BO6) where a transition metal atom (B) is embedded in a cage composed of six oxygen atoms. Strontium titanate (SrTiO3) belongs to the class of particularly important TMO materials with the general formula ABO3. SrTiO3 is a widely used substrate material for electronic oxide thin film devices. Technological applications of SrTiO3 require the optimization of the processes that can reproducibly produce a given surface. Titanium dioxide, another representative of TMO materials, occurs in several forms such as rutile, anatase and brookite. Anatase is less stable than rutile but more efficient for several applications. Anatase is commercially available as powder but a thin solid film form is more suitable for photocatalyses. Therefore, the improvement of the anatase thin film production technique is of great importance.