RF Sputter Deposition of Epitaxial Nanocrystalline Nd1-xSrxCoO3 Thin Films

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the successful rf-magnetron sputtering deposition of epitaxial Nd1-xSrxCoO3 thin films with controlled strain and nanocrystalline morphology on different substrates, highlighting the effects of composition, thickness, and thermal treatment.

Contribution

It reports a novel method for depositing epitaxial Nd1-xSrxCoO3 films with controlled strain and morphology on single crystalline substrates.

Findings

Films are fully oriented and epitaxial with nanocrystalline morphology.

Thermal treatment increases surface roughness from 1 nm to 20 nm.

Films on SrTiO3 are under tensile strain; on LaAlO3, under compressive strain.

Abstract

In this paper we report the deposition of epitaxial thin films of Nd1-xSrxCoO3 with x=0, 0.2 and 0.5 on single crystalline substrates (SrTiO3 and LaAlO3) carried out by means of rf-magnetron sputtering. The deposited films are all completely oriented and epitaxial and characterized by a nanocrystalline morphology. As-deposited films have an average roughness around 1 nm while after the thermal treatment this increases up to 20 nm while preserving the nanocrystalline morphology. All the films deposited on SrTiO3 have shown to be under a certain degree of tensile strain while those on the LaAlO3 experience a compressive strain thus suggesting that at about 50 nm the films are not fully relaxed, even after the thermal treatment. For the x=0.2 composition three different thickness have been investigated revealing an increased strain for the thinner films.