Title : Seed Ru-assisted epitaxial growth of Mn!Sn thin films: Strain-controlled pathway to piezo-magnetism
Abstract:
Non-collinear anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) materials are the prime candidates for AFM spintronics1. In this regard, growing thin films directly on the substrate distorts the crystal orientation and thanks to the seed layer for serving as a template for crystal growth. Here, we studied the non-collinear AFM material ????????!???????? systematically by varying the seed Ru layer deposition temperature and the post-annealing temperature of the stack (substrate/Ru(13 nm)/????????!????????(42 nm)) on ????????"????!(0001) and ????????????(111) substrates. The high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) results prove their epitaxial relationship with the seed Ru layer on both substrates, as shown in Figure 1 (a). Observing higher-order diffraction and the Pendellösung signals suggests that interfaces are coherent in crystal growth2. The calculated out-of-plane lattice constant and the interplanar d-spacing as a function of the mentioned variables corroborate the plausible strain, which ascertains the rocking curve results. It is observed that crystal distribution, hence called mosaicity, is qualitatively larger on ???????????? substrate than on ????????"????! substrate as shown in Figure 1 (b). The calculated strain along the growth direction manifests the growth-induced strain due to lattice mismatch. The calculated strain values compared with the bulk values suggest that the strain is larger on ???????????? than that of the ????????"????! substrate. The static magnetic measurements data indicate that the order parameter can be modulated by controlling the strain via post-annealing temperature conditions. The observed strain-dependent magnetization establishes the piezo-magnetism3. Our systematic investigation on seed Ru-assisted epitaxial growth provides a comprehensive understanding of the viable route towards the fabrication of piezo-magnetic devices.
