Controlled strained layer epitaxial growth of EuTiO3 on buffered silicon

Abstract

In this work, we show the epitaxial growth of (111)-oriented EuTiO[Formula: see text] thin films on (001)-oriented silicon with an in situ grown yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) buffer layer by pulsed laser deposition. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed a homogeneously strained EuTiO[Formula: see text] thin film with a strain dependency on the laser fluence during the film growth. From magnetization vs temperature measurements, we confirmed that the strained EuTiO[Formula: see text] films have an antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic transition at 3.7 K, which disappeared for unstrained films. Furthermore, we used electron backscatter diffraction to analyze the columnar growth of EuTiO[Formula: see text] on YSZ, which showed four in-plane orientations.