Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 15: Poster Session

MM 15.70: Poster

Monday, March 11, 2013, 18:00–20:00, Poster E

SrRuO₃/Pr_0.7Ca_0.3MnO₃ epitaxial multilayers: A HAADF-STEM, EDX and image simulation study — •Eckhard Pippel¹, Reinald Hillebrand¹, Ionela Vrejoiu², and Dietrich Hesse¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, D-06120 Halle (Saale), Germany — ²Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Heisenbergstraße 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

The electrical and magnetic properties of perovskite multilayer structures strongly depend on the interface morphology between the single layers. We study the interfaces of PLD-grown epitaxial multilayer stacks of SrRuO₃/Pr_0.7Ca_0.3MnO₃ (SRO/PCMO) by means of probe-corrected (C_s=0) scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) including energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX). It is possible to clearly distinguish different chemical terminations of the single layers as well as varying degrees of intermixing, if image simulations are utilized. The interfaces are evaluated by matching the intensities of the related atomic columns with simulated HAADF-STEM patterns of crystallographic super-cell models, supported by atomically resolved chemical analysis (EDX). All these techniques proved the interfaces to be affected by intermixing over two (PrO-terminated) or one (SrO-terminated) lattice planes. In practice, a series of annealing experiments of the SRO/PCMO specimens was performend to find out the temperature stability of these perovskite multilayers. The temperatures applied were between 725^∘C and 1200^∘C. In summary it is stated that already Z-dependent HAADF-STEM images offer a fairly good atomically resolved insight into intermixing phenomena.