Long-distance remote epitaxy

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 646; no. 8085; pp. 584 - 591
• Main Authors: Jia, Ru, Xin, Yan, Potter, Mark, Jiang, Jie, Wang, Zixu, Ma, Hanxue, Zhang, Zhihao, Liang, Zhizhuo, Zhang, Lifu, Lu, Zonghuan, Yang, Ruizhe, Pendse, Saloni, Hu, Yang, Peng, Kai, Meng, Yilin, Bao, Wei, Liu, Jun, Wang, Gwo-Ching, Lu, Toh-Ming, Shi, Yunfeng, Gao, Hanwei, Shi, Jian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.10.2025; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 140/125; 140/133; 639/301/357/1018; 639/301/357/551; Buffer layers; Carbon; Crystal defects; Crystallization - methods; Dislocation; Electric potential; Epitaxy; Etching; Fourier transforms; Graphene; Humanities and Social Sciences; Morphology; multidisciplinary; Potassium chloride; Potassium Chloride - chemistry; Scanning electron microscopy; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sodium chloride; Sodium Chloride - chemistry; Substrates; Thick films; Thin films; Zinc oxide; Zinc Oxide - chemistry
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09484-z

Remote epitaxy, in which an epitaxial relation is established between a film and a substrate through remote interactions, enables the development of high-quality single crystalline epilayers and their transfer to and integration with other technologically crucial substates 1 , 2 . It is commonly believed that in remote epitaxy, the distance within which the remote interaction can play a leading part in the epitaxial process is less than 1 nm, as the atomically resolved fluctuating electric potential decays very rapidly to a negligible value after a few atomic distances 3 . Here we show that it is possible to achieve remote epitaxy when the epilayer–substrate distance is as large as 2–7 nm. We experimentally demonstrate long-distance remote epitaxy of CsPbBr 3 film on an NaCl substrate, KCl film on a KCl substrate and ZnO microrods on GaN, and show that a dislocation in the GaN substrate exists immediately below every remotely epitaxial ZnO microrod. These findings indicate that remote epitaxy could be designed and engineered by means of harnessing defect-mediated long-distance remote interactions. Experimental evidence demonstrates long-distance remote epitaxial interactions of thin films even through thick amorphous carbon buffer layers and shows that these can be induced through dislocations in the substrate.