Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 55: Poster II

MA 55.15: Poster

Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:30–13:30, P2

Investigations on the cation distribution of sputtered NiFe₂O₄ thin films with high resistivity — •Christoph Klewe¹, Markus Meinert¹, Karsten Kuepper², Elke Arenholz³, Arunava Gupta⁴, Jan-Michael Schmalhorst¹, Timo Kuschel¹, and Günter Reiss¹ — ¹University of Bielefeld, Germany — ²University of Osnabrück, Germany — ³Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA 94720, USA — ⁴University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Alabama, USA

Oxidic compounds of the ferrite class have attracted a lot of attention due to their potential insulating and ferro(i)magnetic properties. One promising candidate for a wide range of spintronic and spincaloric applications is the inverse spinel ferrite NiFe₂O₄.

We investigated the optical and electronic properties of NiFe₂O₄ thin films prepared by reactive dc magnetron co-sputtering. From conductivity measurements a high resistivity was deduced, while the temperature dependence revealed a significantly low activation energy, which is about one order of magnitude smaller than the gap energy determined by optical spectroscopy. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies gave information about the cation distribution of the sputtered films. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and both x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and linear dichroism (XMLD) allowed to determine the element specific moments and gave additional information on the cation distribution. The results display a full structural inversion and a high structural quality for the investigated films, promoting a utilization in spincaloritronic devices.