Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 241
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30995-4

Regular Article

Strain-dependent magnetic configurations in manganite-titanate heterostructures probed with soft X-ray techniques ^*

¹ Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
² Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, CA 95616 Davis, USA
³ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA 94720 Berkeley, USA
⁴ Institute of Condensed Matter Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

^a e-mail: Rajesh.Chopdekar@psi.ch

Received: 31 October 2012
Received in final form: 11 February 2013
Published online: 3 June 2013

Abstract

We present a detailed study on the strain-induced magnetic domain structure of a (La,Sr)MnO₃ thin film epitaxially grown on a BaTiO₃ substrate through the use of polarization-dependent X-ray photoemission electron microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Angular-dependent measurements allow us to detect vector magnetization on a single-domain scale, and we relate the strain-induced changes in magnetic anisotropy of the ferromagnetic film to the ferroelectric domain structure of the underlying substrate using X-ray magnetic circular and linear dichroism spectro-microscopy. Comparisons to measurements on a nearly strain free film of (La,Sr)MnO₃ grown on a (La,Sr)(Al,Ta)O₃ substrate illustrate that the BaTiO₃ ferroelectric domain structure imprints specific domain sizes and wall orientations in the (La,Sr)MnO₃/BaTiO₃ artificial multiferroic heterostructure. Furthermore, a change of the BaTiO₃ ferroelectric domain structure either with temperature or with applied electric field results in a corresponding change in the (La,Sr)MnO₃ ferromagnetic domain structure, thus showing a possible route to obtain room-temperature electric field control of magnetic anisotropy at the nanoscale.