Bulk Single Crystal‐Like Structural and Magnetic Characteristics of Epitaxial Spinel Ferrite Thin Films with Elimination of Antiphase Boundaries |
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| Authors: | Amit V Singh Behrouz Khodadadi Jamileh Beik Mohammadi Sahar Keshavarz Tim Mewes Devendra Singh Negi Ranjan Datta Zbigniew Galazka Reinhard Uecker Arunava Gupta |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Center for Materials for Information Technology, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA;2. Department of Physics, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA;3. International Centre for Materials Science, Chemistry and Physics of Materials Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India;4. Leibniz Institute for Crystal Growth, Berlin, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Spinel ferrite NiFe2O4 thin films have been grown on three isostructural substrates, MgAl2O4, MgGa2O4, and CoGa2O4 using pulsed laser deposition. These substrates have lattice mismatches of 3.1%, 0.8%, and 0.2%, respectively, with NiFe2O4. As expected, the films grown on MgAl2O4 substrate show the presence of the antiphase boundary defects. However, no antiphase boundaries (APBs) are observed for films grown on near‐lattice‐matched substrates MgGa2O4 and CoGa2O4. This demonstrates that by using isostructural and lattice‐matched substrates, the formation of APBs can be avoided in NiFe2O4 thin films. Consequently, static and dynamic magnetic properties comparable with the bulk can be realized. Initial results indicate similar improvements in film quality and magnetic properties due to the elimination of APBs in other members of the spinel ferrite family, such as Fe3O4 and CoFe2O4, which have similar crystallographic structure and lattice constants as NiFe2O4. |
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| Keywords: | antiphase boundaries ferromagnetic resonance nickel ferrite |
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