Effect of growth orientation on charge- and orbital-ordering (CO-OO) phenomena has been studied for Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 epitaxial thin films fabricated on (LaAlO3)0.3-(SrAl0.5Ta0.5O3)0.7 (LSAT) substrates by means of resistivity, synchrotron x-ray diffraction, and polarized optical microscopy measurements. CO-OO transition is observed around 220 K for a film grown on an LSAT (011) substrate ((011)-film), similarly to a bulk sample, while a film grown on a (001) plane of LSAT ((001)-film) shows much higher transition temperature around 300 K. The domain size of OO is approximately 3 times as large in the (011)-film as in the (001)-film. These results demonstrate that various properties of CO-OO phenomena can be controlled with the growth orientation via the epitaxial strain from the substrate.
@article{arxiv.0908.4573,
title = {Epitaxial-strain effect on charge/orbital order in Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 films},
author = {D. Okuyama and M. Nakamura and Y. Wakabayashi and H. Itoh and R. Kumai and H. Yamada and Y. Taguchi and T. Arima and M. Kawasaki and Y. Tokura},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.4573},
year = {2009}
}