Abstract
The annealing process is an important step common to epitaxial films prepared by chemical solution deposition methods. It is so because the final microstructure of the films can be severely affected by the precise features of the thermal processing. In this work we analyze the structural and magnetic properties of double perovskite La2CoMnO6 and La2NiMnO6 epitaxial thin films prepared by polymer-assisted deposition (PAD) and crystallized by rapid thermal annealing (RTA). It is found that samples prepared by RTA have similar values of saturation magnetization and Curie temperature to their counterparts prepared by using conventional thermal annealing (CTA) processes, thus indicating low influence of the heating rates on the B-B’ site cationic ordering of the A2BB’O6 double perovskite structure. However, a deeper analysis of the magnetic behavior suggested some differences in the actual microstructure of the films.
Highlights
Most of the new technological applications of materials need to utilize thin films and heterostructures to take advantage of the varied benefits of miniaturization
All the films present flat surfaces with low values of RMS, as indicated in the figure. This fact confirms that the Polymer-assisted deposition (PAD) method using rapid thermal annealing (RTA) thermal treatment is able to produce films with surface roughness similar to the ones obtained by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) or sputtering deposition methods
In the case of LNMO epitaxial films, the values of Ms obtained both in LNMO/STO and LNMO/LAO, around 4.3 μB /f.u., after a post-RTA thermal treatment are among the best reported in the literature [35,36,40,42], corresponding to an anti-site defects (ASD) concentration below 10%
Summary
Most of the new technological applications of materials need to utilize thin films and heterostructures to take advantage of the varied benefits of miniaturization. While traditional high-vacuum techniques, such as molecular beam epitaxy [1,2], radiofrequency sputtering [3,4], and pulsed laser deposition [5,6], offer clear benefits for growing thin films of metal oxides with high crystalline quality and excellent control over thickness and composition at the atomic-scale, chemical solution deposition (CSD) methods represent a more affordable alternative for extensive production of high quality functional oxide thin films [7,8,9]. PAD is based on very stable and homogeneous metal-polymer complex aqueous solutions. Towards this end, a water soluble polymer is employed to bind and stabilize the metal cations in the precursor solutions on the one hand and to regulate the solution viscosity determining the film coating [10]
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