Ferromagnetism in CaRuO3 thin films by efficient route of tensile epitaxial strain

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that tensile epitaxial strain can induce and enhance ferromagnetic order in CaRuO3 thin films, surpassing chemical methods in effectiveness, and confirms theoretical predictions about strain-magnetism scaling.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental verification that tensile epitaxial strain induces ferromagnetism in CaRuO3, outperforming chemical doping methods.

Findings

Ferromagnetic order increases with tensile strain.

Tensile strain induces larger magnetic moments than chemical doping.

Experimental results confirm theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We show that a ferromagnetic (FM) order in the orthorhombic CaRuO3, which is a non-magnetic and iso-structural analog of FM system SrRuO3, can be established and stabilized by the means of tensile epitaxial strain. Investigations on the structural and magnetic property correlations in the CaRuO3 films with different degrees of strain reveal that the FM moment increases with increasing the tensile strain. This is an experimental verification to the theoretical predictions of scaling of the tensile epitaxial strain and the magnetic order in this system. Our studies further establish that the tensile strain is more efficient than the chemical route to induce the FM order in CaRuO3 as the magnetic moment in these strained films is larger than that in chemically modified CaRu0.9Cr0.1O3 films.