Turan and experimental colleagues have new paper in Physical Review B.

March 30th, 2012

 

Phys. Rev. B 85, 094435 (2012) [10 pages]

Magnetodielectric effect and phonon properties of compressively strained EuTiO3 thin films deposited on (001)(LaAlO3)0.29-(SrAl1/2Ta1/2O3)0.71

S. Kamba1,*V. Goian1M. Orlita2D. Nuzhnyy1J. H. Lee3D. G. Schlom3,4K. Z. Rushchanskii5M. Ležai?5T. Birol6C. J. Fennie6P. Gemeiner7B. Dkhil7V. Bovtun1M. Kempa1J. Hlinka1, and J. Petzelt1 
1Institute of Physics ASCR, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Prague 8, Czech Republic
2Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses, CNRS-UJF-UPS-INSA, 25, avenue des Martyrs, 38042 Grenoble, France
3Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853-1501, USA
4Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
5Peter Grünberg Institut, Quanten-Theorie der Materialien, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Juelich and JARA FIT, Germany
6School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853, USA
7Laboratoire Structures, Propriétés et Modélisation des Solides, UMR8580 CNRS-Ecole Centrale Paris, 92295 Châtenay-Malabry Cedex, France

 Received 6 January 2012; revised 1 March 2012; published 30 March 2012

Compressively strained epitaxial (001) EuTiO3 thin films of tetragonal symmetry have been deposited on (001) (LaAlO3)0.29-(SrAl1/2Ta1/2O3)0.71 (LSAT) substrates by reactive molecular-beam epitaxy. Enhancement of the Néel temperature by 1 K with 0.9%compressive strain was revealed. The polar phonons of the films have been investigated as a function of temperature and magnetic field by means of infrared reflectance spectroscopy. All three in-plane polarized infrared active phonons show strongly stiffened frequencies compared to bulk EuTiO3 in accordance with first-principles calculations. The phonon frequencies exhibit gradual softening on cooling, leading to an increase in static permittivity. Additional polar phonon with frequency near the TO1 soft mode was detected below 150 K. This mode coupled with the TO1 mode was assigned as the optical phonon from the Brillouin zone edge, which is activated in infrared spectra due to an antiferrodistortive phase transition and due to simultaneous presence of polar and/or magnetic nanoclusters. In the antiferromagnetic phase, we have observed a remarkable softening of the lowest-frequency polar phonon under an applied magnetic field, which qualitatively agrees with first-principles calculations. This demonstrates the strong spin-phonon coupling in EuTiO3, which is responsible for the pronounced dependence of its static permittivity on magnetic field in the antiferromagnetic phase.