Browsing by Author "Liu, Ruirui"

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Origin of metallic behavior in NiCo2O4 ferrimagnet
(2015-10-15)
Bitla, Yugandhar
;
Chin, Yi-Ying
;
Lin, Jheng-Cyuan
;
Van, Chien Nguyen
;
Liu, Ruirui
Predicting and understanding the cation distribution in spinels has been one of the most interesting problems in materials science. The present work investigates the effect of cation redistribution on the structural, electrical, optical and magnetic properties of mixed-valent inverse spinel NiCo2O4(NCO) thin films. It is observed that the films grown at low temperatures (T < 400 degrees C) exhibit metallic behavior while that grown at higher temperatures (T > 400 degrees C) are insulators with lower ferrimagnetic-paramagnetic phase transition temperature. So far, n-type Fe3O4 has been used as a conducting layer for the spinel thin films based devices and the search for a p-type counterpart still remains elusive. The inherent coexistence and coupling of ferrimagnetic order and the metallic nature in p-type NCO makes it a promising candidate for spintronic devices. Detailed X-ray Absorption and X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism studies revealed a strong correlation between the mixed-valent cation distribution and the resulting ferrimagnetic-metallic/insulating behavior. Our study clearly demonstrates that it is the concentration of Ni3+ ions and the Ni3+-O-2-Ni2+ double exchange interaction that is crucial in dictating the metallic behavior in NCO ferrimagnet. The metal-insulator and the associated magnetic order-disorder transitions can be tuned by the degree of cation site disorder via growth conditions.
Spontaneous orientation-tuning driven by the strain variation in self-assembled ZnO-SrRuO3 heteroepitaxy
(2015-11-09)
Zhu, Yuanmin
;
Chang, Wei Sea
;
Yu, Rong
;
Liu, Ruirui
;
Wei, Tzu-Chiao
Heteroepitaxial ZnO and SrRuO3 were grown on SrTiO3 (111) substrates and formed a self-assembled wurtzite-perovskite nanostructure. Spontaneous orientation-tuning of the SrRuO3 pillars was observed, with the growth direction changing from [111](SRO) to [011](SRO) as the film thickness increased, which is attributed to a misfit strain transition from the biaxial strain imposed by the SrTiO3 substrate to the vertical strain provided by the ZnO matrix. The [011]-SrRuO3 and [0001]-ZnO combination presents a favorable matching in the nanocomposite films, resulting in higher charge carrier mobility. This vertically integrated configuration and regulation on the crystallographic orientations are expected to be employed in designing multi-functional nanocomposite systems for applications in electronic devices. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.