Electronic and magnetic properties of (1 1 1)-oriented CoCr2O4 epitaxial thin film

Abstract: We report on the fabrication of high quality (1 1 1)-oriented ferrimagnetic normal spinel CoCr2O4 epitaxial thin films on single crystal Al2O3 substrates. The structural, electronic and magnetic properties were characterized by in-situ reflection high energy electron diffraction, atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, SQUID magnetometry and element resolved resonant X-ray magnetic scattering. The comprehensive characterization reveals that no disorder in the cation distribution or multivalency issue is present in the samples. As a result, Kagome and triangular layers are naturally formed via this specific growth approach. These findings offer a pathway to fabricate two dimensional Kagome heterostructures with novel quantum many-body phenomena by means of geometrical design.