High-quality (001)-oriented (pseudo-cubic notation) ferromagnetic YTiO3 thin films were epitaxially synthesized in a layer-by-layer way by pulsed laser deposition. Structural, magnetic and electronic properties were characterized by reflection-high-energy-electron-diffraction, X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometry, and element-resolved resonant soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. To reveal ferromagnetism of the constituent titanium ions, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy was carried out using four detection modes probing complimentary spatial scale, which overcomes a challenge of probing ferromagnetic titanium with pure Ti3+(3d1). Our work provides a pathway to distinguish between the roles of titanium and A-site magnetic rare-earth cations in determining the magnetism in rare-earth titanates thin films and heterostructures.
@article{arxiv.1508.00198,
title = {Magnetism and electronic structure of YTiO$_3$ thin films},
author = {Yanwei Cao and P. Shafer and Xiaoran Liu and D. Meyers and M. Kareev and S. Middey and J. W. Freeland and E. Arenholz and J. Chakhalian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.00198},
year = {2015}
}