Abstract
A Sol-gel method assisted with spin-coating has been successfully used to grow orthorhombic GaFeO3 epitaxial films on SrTiO3 (111) substrates for the first time. The film with Pna21 crystal structure has been grown along the c-axis. The rocking curve of (004) reflection shows that the Full-Width at Half-Maximum (FWHM) value could be determined to be 0.230°, indicating good single crystallinity and high quality. X-ray Φ scan reveals a three-fold symmetry of the substrate and a six-fold symmetry of the film, respectively. The in-plane domains rotate 60° from each other in the film. Uniform film with dense structure, columnar grains with similar grain size was obtained. The thickness of the film was evaluated to be ~170 nm. The roughness value (RMS) measured by AFM was 4.5 nm, revealing a flat film. The in-plane Magnetization versus Magnetic field (M-H) curve at 5 K performs a typical ferri- or ferromagnetic hysteresis loop with a saturated magnetization (Ms) value of 136 emu/cm3. The Curie temperature could be determined to be 174 K. Compared to Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD), the sol-gel method can prepare large area films with low cost. These new films show promising applications in multiferroic devices.
Highlights
As the demand of environment protection, materials performance, device size, and energy saving is becoming higher, more and more attention is paid to the development of new materials with two or more functions
Multiferroic materials can be applied in the development of new devices like sensors [5,6,7], transducers [8,9], second harmonic generation [10] and information storage [11,12,13]
Out of plane X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) measurement indicates that the growth of the Gax Fe2−x O3 (GFO) films was along the c-axis direction
Summary
As the demand of environment protection, materials performance, device size, and energy saving is becoming higher, more and more attention is paid to the development of new materials with two or more functions. Multiferroic materials possessing magnetic and electric properties simultaneously in the single phase, supply a favorable method to design new devices with high performance. Multiferroic materials can be applied in the development of new devices like sensors [5,6,7], transducers [8,9], second harmonic generation [10] and information storage [11,12,13]. Materials 2019, 12, 254 magnetization only at low temperature [14,15]. This would limit the application of multiferroicity
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