Biaxial compressive strain has been used to markedly enhance the ferroelectric properties of BaTiO3 thin films. This strain, imposed by coherent epitaxy, can result in a ferroelectric transition temperature nearly 500 degrees C higher and a remanent polarization at least 250% higher than bulk BaTiO3 single crystals. This work demonstrates a route to a lead-free ferroelectric for nonvolatile memories and electro-optic devices.

Ferroelectric ferromagnets are exceedingly rare, fundamentally interesting multiferroic materials that could give rise to new technologies in which the low power and high speed of field-effect electronics are combined with the permanence and routability of voltage-controlled ferromagnetism. Furthermore, the properties of the few compounds that simultaneously exhibit these phenomena are insignificant in comparison with those of useful ferroelectrics or ferromagnets: their spontaneous polarizations or magnetizations are smaller by a factor of 1,000 or more. The same holds for magnetic- or electric-field-induced multiferroics. Owing to the weak properties of single-phase multiferroics, composite and multilayer approaches involving strain-coupled piezoelectric and magnetostrictive components are the closest to application today. Recently, however, a new route to ferroelectric ferromagnets was proposed by which magnetically ordered insulators that are neither ferroelectric nor ferromagnetic are transformed into ferroelectric ferromagnets using a single control parameter, strain. The system targeted, EuTiO(3), was predicted to exhibit strong ferromagnetism (spontaneous magnetization, approximately 7 Bohr magnetons per Eu) and strong ferroelectricity (spontaneous polarization, approximately 10 microC cm(-2)) simultaneously under large biaxial compressive strain. These values are orders of magnitude higher than those of any known ferroelectric ferromagnet and rival the best materials that are solely ferroelectric or ferromagnetic. Hindered by the absence of an appropriate substrate to provide the desired compression we turned to tensile strain. Here we show both experimentally and theoretically the emergence of a multiferroic state under biaxial tension with the unexpected benefit that even lower strains are required, thereby allowing thicker high-quality crystalline films. This realization of a strong ferromagnetic ferroelectric points the way to high-temperature manifestations of this spin-lattice coupling mechanism. Our work demonstrates that a single experimental parameter, strain, simultaneously controls multiple order parameters and is a viable alternative tuning parameter to composition for creating multiferroics.

Doped EuO is an attractive material for the fabrication of proof-of-concept spintronic devices. Yet for decades its use has been hindered by its instability in air and the difficulty of preparing and patterning high-quality thin films. Here, we establish EuO as the pre-eminent material for the direct integration of a carrier-concentration-matched half-metal with the long-spin-lifetime semiconductors silicon and GaN, using methods that transcend these difficulties. Andreev reflection measurements reveal that the spin polarization in doped epitaxial EuO films exceeds 90%, demonstrating that EuO is a half-metal even when highly doped. Furthermore, EuO is epitaxially integrated with silicon and GaN. These results demonstrate the high potential of EuO for spintronic devices.

BiFeO 3 thin films have been deposited on ͑001͒ SrTiO 3 substrates by adsorption-controlled reactive molecular-beam epitaxy. For a given bismuth overpressure and oxygen activity, single-phase BiFeO 3 films can be grown over a range of deposition temperatures in accordance with thermodynamic calculations. Four-circle x-ray diffraction reveals phase-pure, epitaxial films with rocking curve full width at half maximum values as narrow as 29 arc sec ͑0.008°͒. Multiple-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry reveals a direct optical band gap at 2.74 eV for stoichiometric as well as 5% bismuth-deficient single-phase BiFeO 3 films.

Emergent phenomena, including superconductivity and magnetism, found in the two-dimensional electron liquid (2-DEL) at the interface between the insulators lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO 3 ) and strontium titanate (SrTiO 3 ) distinguish this rich system from conventional 2D electron gases at compound semiconductor interfaces. The origin of this 2-DEL, however, is highly debated, with focus on the role of defects in the SrTiO 3 , while the LaAlO 3 has been assumed perfect. Here we demonstrate, through experiments and firstprinciple calculations, that the cation stoichiometry of the nominal LaAlO 3 layer is key to 2-DEL formation: only Al-rich LaAlO 3 results in a 2-DEL. Although extrinsic defects, including oxygen deficiency, are known to render LaAlO 3 /SrTiO 3 samples conducting, our results show that in the absence of such extrinsic defects an interface 2-DEL can form. Its origin is consistent with an intrinsic electronic reconstruction occurring to counteract a polarization catastrophe. This work provides insight for identifying other interfaces where emergent behaviours await discovery.

We report the structural properties of homoepitaxial (100) SrTiO3 films grown by reactive molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). The lattice spacing and x-ray diffraction (XRD) rocking curves of stoichiometric MBE-grown SrTiO3 films are indistinguishable from the underlying SrTiO3 substrates. Off-stoichiometry for both strontium-rich and strontium-poor compositions (i.e., Sr1+xTiO3+δ films with −0.2<x<0.2) results in lattice expansion with significant changes to the shuttered reflection high-energy electron diffraction oscillations, XRD, and film microstructure. The dependence of lattice spacing on nonstoichiometry is smaller for MBE-grown films than for homoepitaxial (100) Sr1+xTiO3+δ films prepared by pulsed-laser deposition or sputtering.

We have studied the effect of biaxial strain on thin films of (001) La0.7Sr0.3MnO3. We deposited films by reactive molecular-beam epitaxy on different single crystalline substrates, varying the substrate-induced biaxial strain from −2.3% to +3.2%. Magnetization and electrical transport measurements reveal that the dependence of the Curie temperature on biaxial strain is in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions of Millis et al

Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, the room temperature refractive index and absorption versus wavelength of the ferroelectric antiferromagnet bismuth ferrite, BiFeO3, are reported. The material has a direct band gap at 442nm wavelength (2.81eV). Using optical second harmonic generation, the nonlinear optical coefficients were determined to be d15∕d22=0.20±0.01, d31∕d22=0.35±0.02, d33∕d22=−11.4±0.20, and ∣d22∣=298.4±6.1pm∕V at a fundamental wavelength of 800nm.