STUDY OF TISE2 NBSE2 SUPERLATTICES WITH SCANNING-TRANSMISSION X-RAY MICROSCOPY/

A scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) has been applied to st udy TiSe2/NbSe2 superlattices crystallized from an elementally modulat ed film. The STXM images show that the superlattice sample has structu res with sizes on the order of one micrometer in the x-y plane. X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) show that the titanium in the structure is in the form of a mixture of crystalline TiSe2 and metallic Ti. The struc ture shows interfacial nucleation of the layers in the kinetic trappin g method with different domain sizes for different sets of TiSe2 and N bSe2 layer numbers in a unit-cell. The XAS obtained using the STXM pro vide detailed chemical and structural information generally not availa ble using conventional total electron yield detection.