(100) Heterostructure

The itinerant ferromagnetism in the ultrathin SrRuO₃ films, grown by pulsed laser deposition, above a critical thickness of 3-4 unit cell (uc) has been reported previously by few groups[1-3]. On the other hand, in SrTiO₃/SrRuO₃/SrTiO₃(100) heterostructure and (SrRuO₃)₁–(SrTiO₃)₅ superlattices grown by oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique, the ferromagnetism was found to persist even with a 1-uc of SrRuO₃[4]. It was suggested that the RuO₆ octahedral tilting angle may be affected by the SrTiO₃ capping layer, which in turn influences the ferromagnetism of the underlying SrRuO₃[4]. Detailed investigations on the SrTiO₃ capped and uncapped SrRuO₃ films are required to fully understand the intrinsic mechanism involved for the magnetic properties of ultra-thin SrRuO₃ films. In this work, Systematic studies of the structural and magnetic properties of the SrTiO₃(x-uc)/SrRuO₃(y-uc)/SrTiO₃(100) heterostructure with various thicknesses of x-uc and y-uc will be presented and discussed[3, 5].
References
1. J. Xia et. al. Phys. Rev. B 79 140407 (2009)
2. K. Ishigami et. al. Phys. Rev. B 92 064402 (2015)
3. G. Koster et. al. Reviews of Modern Physics 84 253 (2012)
4. C. R. Hughes et. al. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.08901 (2016)
5. H. P. Nair et. al. APL Materials 6 046101 (2018)