Epitaxial growth of La1/3Sr2/3FeO3 thin films by laser ablation

We report on the synthesis of high quality La1/3Sr2/3FeO3 (LSFO) thin films using the pulsed laser deposition technique on both SrTiO3 (STO) and LaAlO3 (LAO) substrates (100)-oriented. From x-ray diffraction (XRD) studies, we find that the films have an out-of-plane lattice parameter around 0.3865 nm, almost independent of the substrate (i.e. the nature of the strains). The transport properties reveal that, while LSFO films deposited on STO exhibit an anomaly in the resistivity versus temperature at 180 K (corresponding to the charge-ordered transition and associated with a transition from a paramagnetic to an antiferromagnetic state), the films grown on LAO display a very small magnetoresistance behaviour and present an hysteresis around 270 K under the application of a 4 T magnetic field. The changes in transport properties between both substrates are discussed and compared with the corresponding single crystals.