Such fabrication could attain the practical mass production of a device. Moreover, to form functional heterostructure microelectronic devices, sapphire substrates can be used to integrate LSMO nanofilms with other high-quality optoelectronic thin films [11, 12]. During this project, two different crystallographic textured LSMO thin films with a nanoscale thickness were grown using In2O3 epitaxial underlayering. These films did not suffer lattice

stress. These results enable an Avapritinib manufacturer analysis of the correlation between nanoscale crystal imperfections and manganite nanofilm physical properties. Methods LSMO nanolayers selleck chemicals llc (the Sr content is approximately 39%) with thickness of approximately 60 nm were grown on the c-axis-oriented sapphire substrates with and without 40-nm-thick In2O3 (222) epitaxial buffering. The deposition of the In2O3 epitaxy layers and LSMO nanolayers was performed using a radiofrequency magnetron-sputtering system. During the deposition, the substrate temperature for the thin-film growth of the In2O3 epitaxy and LSMO nanolayer was kept at 600°C and 750°C, respectively. Moreover, the gas pressure of deposition was fixed at 10 mTorr with an Ar/O2 ratio of 3:1. The as-synthesized samples are further annealed in air ambient at 950°C for 30 min. The crystal structure of the samples was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) with Cu Kα radiation. The detailed microstructure of the as-synthesized samples was characterized

see more by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The composition analysis was performed using energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) attached to the TEM. The surface morphology of the LSMO nanolayers was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) with an area size of 2 μm × 2 μm. The surface current images of the LSMO nanolayers were also observed

using conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM) with PtIr tips. A superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer was used to measure the magnetic properties of the samples. Results and discussion Figure 1a,b shows the XRD patterns of the LSMO nanolayers grown on sapphire substrates with and without In2O3 epitaxial Methane monooxygenase buffering, respectively. In addition to Bragg reflection from the In2O3 (222) and Al2O3 (0001) crystallographic planes, clear Bragg reflections of (100), (110), and (200) were present for the pseudo-cubic LSMO in the XRD measurement range. The XRD results show a highly (110)-oriented crystallographic feature of the LSMO nanolayer grown on the In2O3 (222) epitaxy. By contrast, a highly (h00)-oriented crystallographic feature was observed for the LSMO nanolayer grown on the bare sapphire substrate. The LSMO nanolayers with and without In2O3 epitaxial buffering are in a pseudocubic structure with a similar lattice constant of 0.387 nm. This is similar to the bulk value [4], demonstrating that no lattice distortion exists in the nanofilms.