Publication Date:
2016-07-09
Description:
Author(s): A. K. Choquette, C. R. Smith, R. J. Sichel-Tissot, E. J. Moon, M. D. Scafetta, E. Di Gennaro, F. Miletto Granozio, E. Karapetrova, and S. J. May The control of octahedral rotations in perovskite heterostructures is an emerging strategy for inducing new functionality as evidenced by recent predictions of improper ferroelectricity, polar metals, and multiferroics. Many of these predictions are predicated on the presence of a specific rotation pattern ( a − a − c + ) in superlattices that exhibit the orthorhombic ( P b n m ) perovskite structural variant. The authors use synchrotron diffraction to measure the octahedral rotation patterns in strained ferrite, manganite, and gallate perovskite films finding that compressive strain strongly favors a + a − c − rotation patterns and tensile strain weakly favors a − a − c + structures. In contrast, films grown on orthorhombic substrates exhibit the same rotation pattern orientation as the substrate, even for epitaxial conditions where strain would favor the opposite structural orientation. The results indicate that substrate imprinting is a more robust method than strain for controlling the rotation pattern in P b n m -type perovskite films, a finding that should enable more efficient experimental pursuits of rotation-driven ferroic states in oxide heterostructures. [Phys. Rev. B 94, 024105] Published Thu Jul 07, 2016
Keywords:
Structure, structural phase transitions, mechanical properties, defects
Print ISSN:
1098-0121
Electronic ISSN:
1095-3795
Topics:
Physics
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