Combining half-metals and multiferroics into epitaxial heterostructures for spintronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the successful growth of epitaxial heterostructures combining half-metals and multiferroics, maintaining their properties and enabling potential applications in spintronic devices.

Contribution

It reports the epitaxial growth of LSMO/BFO bilayers with preserved ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties, suitable for ferroelectric tunnel junctions.

Findings

LSMO layer is ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of ~330K

BFO films exhibit ferroelectricity down to 5 nm thickness

High, homogeneous resistive state suitable for tunnel junctions

Abstract

We report on the growth of epitaxial bilayers of the La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 (LSMO) half-metallic ferromagnet and the BiFeO3 (BFO) multiferroic, on SrTiO3(001) by pulsed laser deposition. The growth mode of both layers is two-dimensional, which results in unit-cell smooth surfaces. We show that both materials keep their properties inside the heterostructures, i.e. the LSMO layer (11 nm thick) is ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of ~330K, while the BFO films shows ferroelectricity down to very low thicknesses (5 nm). Conductive-tip atomic force microscope mappings of BFO/LSMO bilayers for different BFO thicknesses reveal a high and homogeneous resistive state for the BFO film that can thus be used as a ferroelectric tunnel barrier in tunnel junctions based on a half-metal.