The study presents the synthesis of epitaxial V2O3 thin films on c-plane Al2O3 substrates by reactive high-power impulse (HiPIMS) and direct current (dcMS) magnetron sputtering. The results reveal that for fixed deposition conditions and discharge power, well defined epitaxial layers can be attained using both HiPIMS and dcMS. For dcMS we observe the formation of these epitaxial films down to flow rate values of 1.3 sccm while for HiPIMS we observe an extended operation window down to much lower oxygen flow of 0.5 sccm without sacrificing the structural quality of the films. Furthermore, the effect of varying HiPIMS discharge parameters i.e. repetition frequency and average power for fixed O2 flow setting, were explored in order to determine their effect on the structural quality and electrical characteristics of the films. The magnitude of the metal–insulator transition (MIT) and the transition temperature is correlated to the film stoichiometry which can be fine-tuned by mapping the HiPIMS discharge parameters, displaying a total change in resistance of ∼7 decades over the studied temperature range. The MIT temperature and magnitude obtained for films fabricated by HiPIMS, even for low O2 flow settings (down to 0.6–0.5 sccm), displayed superior characteristics compared to films fabricated by dcMS where a minimum O2 flow of 1.3 sccm was needed.
In this work we present a temperature and angular dependent study of the structural and magnetic properties in highly crystalline V2O3/Ni/Zr magnetic heterostructure films. Our investigation focuses on the coupling between the ferromagnetic Ni layer and V2O3 layer which undergoes an antiferromagnetic/paramagnetic phase transition coupled to the structural phase transition of the material at around 150 K. Structural investigations using x-ray diffraction reveal highly crystalline films of a quality which has previously not been reported in the literature. The Ni layers display an absence of in-plane magnetic anisotropy owing to the highly textured (1 1 1) layering of the Ni films on the underlying V2O3 (0 0 0 1) oriented layer. During the transition we observe a strain related enhancement of the coercivity and the onset of a weak exchange bias for cooling under an external magnetic field. Heating the films to above the transition temperature, the exchange bias in the Ni is removed and can be reversed upon subsequent cooling under an inverted external magnetic field. Using temperature dependent polarized neutron reflectometry we investigate the film structure at the interface, capturing the magnetic and nuclear profiles.
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