Abstract
Configurational disorder can have a dominating role in the formation of macroscopic functional responses in strongly correlated materials. Here, we use entropy-stabilization synthesis to create single-crystal epitaxial ABO3 perovskite thin films with equal atomic concentration of 3d transition-metal cations on the B-site sublattice. X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscopy of La(Cr0.2Mn0.2Fe0.2Co0.2Ni0.2)O3 (L5BO) films demonstrate excellent crystallinity, smooth film surfaces, and uniform mixing of the 3d transition-metal cations throughout the B-site sublattice. The magnetic properties are strongly dependent on substrate-induced lattice anisotropy and suggest the presence of long-range magnetic order in these exceptionally disordered materials. The ability to populate multiple elements onto a single sublattice in complex crystal structures opens new possibilities to design functionality in correlated systems and enable novel fundamental studies seeking to understand how diverse local bonding environments can work to generate macroscopic responses, such as those driven by electron-phonon channels and complex exchange interaction pathways.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 014404/ |
Journal | Physical Review Materials |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 13 2020 |
Funding
This work has been partially supported by U.S. DOE Grant No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript or allow others to do so for U.S. Government purposes. Experiment design, sample synthesis, and structural characterization were supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. A portion of this research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DGE-1069091, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Graduate Opportunities! Program, and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research. STEM and some magnetometry were conducted through user proposal at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a US DOE, Office of Science User Facility. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.