Vertical Strain-Driven Antiferromagnetic to Ferromagnetic Phase Transition in Self Assembled EuTiO₃-Eu₂O₃ Nanocomposite Thin Film on SrTiO_3.

A broad spectrum of functionalities in oxide thin films can be tailored by strain engineering, the strain-enabled multiferroic EuTiO₃ thin film is one typical example. Differ from previous reported lateral strain introduced by substrates, vertical strain imposed by novel vertically aligned nanocomposite structure (VAN) has been used to cause tetragonal distortion of EuTiO₃, thus tuned its magnetic phase from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic. Meanwhile, by a combination of other literature data, the magnetic phase diagram of EuTiO₃ has been proposed to illustrate the relationship between strain-enabled tetragonal distortion and different magnetic phase region.