The MBE Machine

The MBE (molecular beam epitaxy) machine is an ultrahigh vacuum system based on a setup acquired from Specs (hence, also named Specs machine) with a preparation chamber optimized for growth of thin films. Besides a sample manipulator with electron beam heater, ion source for sputtering, evaporators, and a quartz crystal microbalance, the preparation chamber also houses an oxygen plasma source. The analysis chamber is equipped with XPS, LEED and a variable-temperature STM.

In 2014, the machine has been extended with a laser-MBE system, where oxides can be grown by pulsed laser deposition with in-situ control of the growth mode by RHEED (reflection high-energy electron diffraction). Growing complex oxides layer by layer with well-defined structure and stoichiometry is a challenging task, but we have been already successful with it!

As you can imagine when looking at the image, it is currently the largest UHV machine of our group…