Strain-engineered tetragonal phase and ferroelectricity in GdMnO3 thin films grown on SrTiO3 (001)

• Autor(a) principal: Machado, P
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Figueiras, F. G., Vilarinho, R., Fernandes, J. R. A., Tavares, P. B., Soares, M. Rosário, Cardoso, S., Silva, J. P. B., Almeida, A., Moreira, J. Agostinho
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/62672
• topic: Ciências Naturais::Ciências Físicas; Science & Technology

A previously unreported tetragonal phase has been discovered in a epitaxially strained GdMnO3 thin films deposited on (001)-oriented SrTiO3 substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. The tetragonal axis of the films grown up to a 35 nm thickness is perpendicular to the film surface and the basal lattice parameters are imposed by the cubic structure of the substrate. Furthermore, the emergence of a spontaneous electric polarization below ~32 K points to the stabilization of an improper ferroelectric phase at low temperatures, which is not observed in bulk GdMnO3. This work shows how strain engineering can be used to tailor the structure and properties of strongly correlated oxides.