We combined photoelemission spectroscopy with first-principle calculations to investigate structural and electronic properties of SrTiO3 doped with Ni impurities. In SrTiO3 polycrystalline thin films, grown by magnetron sputtering, the mean size of the crystallites increases with the concentration of Ni. To determine the electronic band structure of SrTiO3 films doped with Ni, high quality ordered pristine and SrTiO3:Nix films with x=0.06 and 0.12 were prepared by pulsed laser deposition. Electronic band structure calculations for the ground state, as well as one-step model photoemission calculations, which were obtained by means of the Korringa-Khon-Rostoker Greens's function method, predicted the formation of localised 3d-impurity bands in the band gap of SrTiO3 close to the valence band maxima. The measured valence bands at the resonance Ni2p excitation and band dispersion confirm these findings.
@article{arxiv.2011.12648,
title = {Photoemission study on pristine and Ni-doped SrTiO$_{3}$ thin films},
author = {F. Alarab and K. Hricovini and B. Leikert and L. Nicolai and M. Fanciulli and O. Heckmann and M. Richter and L. Prušakova and Z. Jansa and P. Šutta and J. Rault and P. Lefevre and M. Muntwiller and R. Claessen and J. Minár},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.12648},
year = {2020}
}