Electronic and Spin States of SrRuO3 Thin Films: an X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism Study

TL;DR

This study uses x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy to investigate the local magnetic properties of SrRuO3 thin films, revealing a stable low spin state with quenched orbital moments and unlikely transition to high spin states.

Contribution

It provides detailed spectroscopic analysis confirming the stability of the low spin state in SrRuO3 thin films and rules out high spin state transitions under strain.

Findings

Orbital moment is nearly quenched in SrRuO3 thin films.

Spin moment aligns with the low spin state S=1.

Transition to high spin state S=2 is energetically unfavorable.

Abstract

We report a study of the local magnetism in thin films of SrRuO3 grown on (111) and (001) oriented SrTiO3 substrates using x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy (XMCD) at the Ru-L2,3 edges. The application of the sum rules to the XMCD data gives an almost quenched orbital moment and a spin moment close to the value expected for the low spin state S = 1 . Full-multiplet cluster calculations indicate that the low spin state is quite stable and suggest that the occurrence of a transition to the high spin state S = 2 in strained thin films of SrRuO3 is unlikely as it would be too expensive in energy.