This week, we received a new chamber (nicknamed “TURF”) to grow oxide thin films by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), equipped with high-pressure RHEED and laser heating. Through a cluster tool this chamber is now connected with another PLD system (“SURF”) and a sputtering chamber (to grow metallic layers). As gourmets know very well, Surf and Turf make for nice combinations ! For us, TURF greatly expands the range of materials that can be combined in our heterostructures.

This new system was acquired thanks to financial support from the DIM Oxymore of the Ile-de-France region through project “NEIMO” and the ERC project “MINT”.

Working with the group of Jacobo Santamaria in Madrid and the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, we have observed for the first time how magnetic domains mutually influence one another other at interfaces of all-oxide tunnel junctions. In epitaxial heterostructures combining layers of antiferromagnetic LaFeO3 (LFO) and ferromagnetic La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO), we have found that a net magnetic moment is induced in the first few unit planes of LFO near the interface with LSMO.

Using X-ray photoemission electron microscopy, we could show that the ferromagnetic domain structure of the manganite electrodes is imprinted into the antiferromagnetic tunnel barrier, endowing it with spin selectivity.

Insight into spin transport in oxide heterostructures from interface-resolved magnetic mapping
F.Y. Bruno et al, Nature Commun. 6, 6306 (2015)