Effect of oxygen deficiencies on magnetic properties of epitaxial grown BaFeO/sub 3/ thin films on (100) SrTiO/sub 3/ substrates

BaFeO/sub 3/ (BFO) epitaxial thin films on [001] SrTiO/sub 3/ substrates have been successfully produced by pulsed laser beam deposition. The epitaxially grown BFO was found to have tetragonal crystal structure with some amount of oxygen deficiencies. The magnetic susceptibilities of the samples strongly depended on the (hkl) directions of BFO varied in accordance with the crystalline directions, i.e., /spl chi//sub (100)/spin structure of the epitaxially grown BFO was speculated to be conventional antiferromagnetic. The remanent magnetization of the samples was found to depend on the amount of oxygen deficiencies significantly. This implies that the 180/spl deg/ superexchange interaction of Fe/sup 4+/-O/sup 2-/-Fe/sup 4+/ may possibly produce some kinds of ferromagnetic ordering.