Photoemission study on pristine and Ni-doped SrTiO thin films
arXiv:2011.12648
Abstract
We combined photoelemission spectroscopy with first-principle calculations to investigate structural and electronic properties of SrTiO doped with Ni impurities. In SrTiO polycrystalline thin films, grown by magnetron sputtering, the mean size of the crystallites increases with the concentration of Ni. To determine the electronic band structure of SrTiO films doped with Ni, high quality ordered pristine and SrTiO3:Ni films with x=0.06 and 0.12 were prepared by pulsed laser deposition. Electronic band structure calculations for the ground state, as well as one-step model photoemission calculations, which were obtained by means of the Korringa-Khon-Rostoker Greens's function method, predicted the formation of localised -impurity bands in the band gap of SrTiO close to the valence band maxima. The measured valence bands at the resonance Ni2p excitation and band dispersion confirm these findings.
12 pages and 7 figures