Growth, microstructure and magnetic properties of bixbyite structure ScFeO3: A comparative study between bulk and thin film

The growth, microstructure and magnetic property of both bulk and thin film types of ScFeO3 are studied. Results show that the mono-phase bixbyite structure bulk ScFeO3 can be obtained with sintering temperature above 1400 °C. The bulk ScFeO3 shows dominant antiferromagnetic property with an antiferromagnetic Neel temperature TN about -26 K. The epitaxial type of ScFeO3 thin film with bixbyite structure can be well grown on the SrTiO3(111) substrate. The magnetic property of ScFeO3 thin film is significantly different from that of bulk material which shows notable room temperature ferromagnetism with a saturation field below 0.4 T. The saturation magnetization MS, remanent magnetization Mr, coercivity Hc and of ScFeO3 film increase with decreasing temperature with maximum values of MS = 5.1 emu/cc, Mr = 1.5 emu/cc, and Hc = 29 mT at 5 K. The ferromagnetism of ScFeO3 thin film should be caused by the interface mismatch strain at film/substrate interface. This further proves that ferromagnetism of ScFeO3 can be stabilized with microstructure engineering including strain, which enable multifunctional properties of this material.