The role of extreme configurational disorder in entropy stabilized single crystal perovskite oxides

The ABO₃ perovskite and its derivatives are broadly important to a range of fundamental and applied interests. Modification of the A and B sites through substitutional doping allows for a wide variety of distortions and charge states to be tuned. Local distortions arising from cation size variance are balanced by internal changes to Jahn-Teller distortions and octahedral tilts and rotations. In strongly correlated systems, these shifts to local environment are often central to the emergence of important macroscopic functionalities. In this talk, we will describe our recent work using entropy stabilization to synthesize single crystal ABO₃ perovskite films possessing 6 or more cations to begin to explore how extreme levels of microscopic disorder might be used to generate unexpected long-range ordering responses. We will discuss how the element specific magnetic and charge states of the cations in La(Cr_0.2Mn_0.2Fe_0.2Co_0.2Ni_0.2)O₃ films are impacted by the extreme site to site disorder. Experimental results from STEM-EELs, XRD, XMCD, neutron diffraction, and SQUID magnetometry will be presented.