Strain Healing of Spin-Orbit Coupling: A Cause for Enhanced Magnetic Moment in Epitaxial SrRuO3 Thin Films
arXiv:1901.00613 · doi:10.1088/1361-648X/ab8424
Abstract
Enhanced magnetic moment and coercivity in SrRuO3 thin films are significant issues for advanced technological usages and hence are researched extensively in recent times. Most of the previous reports on thin films with enhanced magnetic moment attributed the high spin state for the enhancement. Our magnetization results show high magnetic moment of 3.3 Bohr-magnetron/Ru ion in the epitaxial thin films grown on LSAT substrate against 1.2 Bohr-magnetron/Ru ion observed in bulk compound. Contrary to the expectation the Ru ions are found to be in low spin state and the orbital moment is shown to be contributing significantly in the enhancement of magnetic moment. We employed x-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant valance band spectroscopy to probe the spin state and orbital contributions in these films. The existence of strong spin-orbit coupling responsible for the de-quenching of the 4d orbitals is confirmed by the observation of the non-statistical large branching ratio at the Ru M2,3 absorption edges. The relaxation of orbital quenching by strain engineering provides a new tool for enhancing magnetic moment. Strain disorder is shown to be an efficient mean to control the spin-orbit coupling.
arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (7)
- Spin-Orbit Coupling in Iridium-Based 5d Compounds Probed by X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy
- Fundamental thickness limit of itinerant ferromagnetic SrRuO thin films
- Higgs mode and its decay in a two dimensional antiferromagnet
- Electronic and Spin States of SrRuO3 Thin Films: an X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism Study
- Soft x-ray magnetic circular dichroism study of Ca_1-xSr_xRuO_3 across the ferromagnetic quantum phase transition
- Spin-Orbital Excitations in CaRuO Revealed by Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering
- Strain induced metal-insulator transition in ultrathin films of SrRuO