COMMUNICATION
(1 of 8)Integration of complex oxide materials with traditional electronic materials such as silicon (Si) and III-V semiconductors has attracted tremendous attention and efforts are being spent to overcome the growth challenges due to oxidation of the semiconducting materials and/or large lattice mismatch between those. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] A breakthrough occurred for the growth of strontium-titanate (SrTiO 3 or STO) on Si, where, by introducing a 1/2 monolayer strontium (Sr) as a template, the oxidation of Si is prevented and renders the epitaxial growth of STO on Si by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) possible. [1,2] Another strategy is to deposit an yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) buffer layer to remove Due to its physical properties gallium-nitride (GaN) is gaining a lot of attention as an emerging semiconductor material in the field of high-power and high-frequency electronics applications. Therefore, the improvement in the performance and/or perhaps even extension in functionality of GaN based devices would be highly desirable. The integration of ferroelectric materials such as lead-zirconate-titanate (PbZr x Ti 1-x O 3 ) with GaN has a strong potential to offer such an improvement. However, the large lattice mismatch between PZT and GaN makes the epitaxial growth of Pb(Zr 1-x Ti x )O 3 on GaN a formidable challenge. This work discusses a novel strain relaxation mechanism observed when MgO is used as a buffer layer, with thicknesses down to a single unit cell, inducing epitaxial growth of high crystallinity Pb(Zr 0.52 Ti 0.48 ) O 3 (PZT) thin films. The epitaxial PZT films exhibit good ferroelectric properties, showing great promise for future GaN device applications.