Raman signal reveals the rhombohedral crystallographic structure in ultra-thin layers of bismuth thermally evaporated on amorphous substrate

Abstract

Under the challenge of growing a single bilayer of Bi oriented in the (111) crystallographic direction over amorphous substrates, we have studied different thicknesses of Bi thermally evaporated onto silicon oxide in order to shed light on the dominant atomic structures and their oxidation. We have employed atomic force microscope, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscope approaches to demonstrate that Bi is crystalline and oriented in the (111) direction for thicknesses over 20 nm. Surprisingly, Raman spectroscopy indicates that the rhombohedral structure is preserved even for ultra-thin layers of Bi, down to nm. Moreover, the signals also reveal that bismuth films exposed to ambient conditions do not suffer major surface oxidation.