Strain-Engineered Oxygen Vacancies in CaMnO3 Thin Films

Ravini U. Chandrasena, Weibing Yang, Qingyu Lei, Mario Delgado Jaime, Kanishka D. Wijesekara, Maryam Golalikhani, Bruce A. Davidson, Elke Arenholz, Keisuke Kobayashi, Masaaki Kobata, Frank M.F. De Groot, Ulrich Aschauer, Nicola A. Spaldin, Xiaoxing Xi, Alexander X. Gray

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel pathway to control and stabilize oxygen vacancies in complex transition-metal oxide thin films. Using atomic layer-by-layer pulsed laser deposition (PLD) from two separate targets, we synthesize high-quality single-crystalline CaMnO3 films with systematically varying oxygen vacancy defect formation energies as controlled by coherent tensile strain. The systematic increase of the oxygen vacancy content in CaMnO3 as a function of applied in-plane strain is observed and confirmed experimentally using high-resolution soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) in conjunction with bulk-sensitive hard X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (HAXPES). The relevant defect states in the densities of states are identified and the vacancy content in the films quantified using the combination of first-principles theory and core–hole multiplet calculations with holistic fitting. Our findings open up a promising avenue for designing and controlling new ionically active properties and functionalities of com...
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)794-799
Number of pages6
JournalNano Letters
Volume17
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • Strongly correlated oxides
  • X-ray spectroscopy
  • oxygen vacancies
  • strain engineering

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