Magnetic, optical and magneto-optical properties of strain-free La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 thin films on Si substrates with Ca2Nb3O10 nanosheet seed layer
Abstract
A study of magnetic, optical, and magneto-optical properties of a textured thin film of La(2/3)Sr(1/3)MnO(3) (LSMO) on silicon is presented. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) was used to prepare a (001)-textured thin film sample of LSMO on silicon using a two-dimensional Ca(2)Nb(3)O(10) (CNO) nanosheet (NS) seed layer.
An epitaxial LSMO film on SrTiO(3) (STO) was prepared under similar conditions as a reference. Significant relaxation of strain was observed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) on the LSMO film atop silicon. The textured sample of LSMO proved to have a higher Curie temperature with lower overall magnetization.
Optical properties of the samples were proven comparable with deviations in the infra-red region. Optical and magneto-optical properties of the samples have been used to model the spectral dependence of the full permittivity tensor.
The off-diagonal elements of the permittivity tensors have been found to share a common spectral shape for the two samples. The spectral dependence of the LSMO sample atop silicon exhibited a lower amplitude and a slight shift of the global maximum to lower energies, corresponding to lower strain in the textured sample.
Overall, the many similarities between the samples, the higher Curie temperature, and the lower strain in the textured LSMO film show promise in the integration of LSMO on silicon substrates using a CNO NS seed layer.