Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Current Applied Physics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cap Structure and magnetic properties of CrN thin films on La 0.67 Sr 0.33 MnO 3 Dingbo Zhang a , Zhongpo Zhou a,b,* , Haiying Wang a , Tianxing Wang a , Zhansheng Lu a , Zongxian Yang a , Zhiwei Ai b , Hao Wu b , Chang Liu b a Henan Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials, School of Physics and Materials Science, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China b Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-structures of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Molecular beam epitaxy CrN LSMO Heterojunction Magnetic property ABSTRACT High crystalline quality CrN thin films have been grown on La 0.67 Sr 0.33 MnO 3 (LSMO) templates by molecular beam epitaxy. The structure and magnetic properties of CrN/LSMO heterojunctions are investigated combining with the experiments and the first-principles simulation. The Nėel temperature of the CrN/LSMO samples is found to be 281 K and the saturation magnetization of CrN/LSMO increases compared to that of LSMO tem- plates. The magnetic property of CrN/LSMO heterostructures mainly comes from Cr atoms of (001) CrN and Mn atoms of (001) LSMO. The (001) LSMO induces and couples the spin of the CrN sublattice at CrN/LSMO in- terface. 1. Introduction Modern spintronic devices such as high-density memories take ad- vantage of antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials to tailor the switching behavior of adjacent ferromagnetic (FM) materials by coupling [1]. The understanding of spin structures at interfaces of AFM/FM is highly desirable not only for the advancing technology but also for enabling new insights into the fundamental mechanism of the related magnetic effects [2]. CrN as an AFM material [3–5] has stimulated intense study due to its magnetic properties, which makes it an attractive candidate for high- performance magnetic devices [6]. CrN undergoes a first order phase transition to the AFM with an orthorhombic phase at Nėel temperature (T N ) in the range of 273–283 K from paramagnetic (PM) with a cubic lattice at room temperature [7]. It is considered that the structural distortion is closely related to the magnetic phase transformation [8,9]. As always, the choice of substrates greatly affects the interface micro- structure and physical properties including the magnetic properties of the epitaxial layers. CrN grown on MgO shows a PM behavior, whereas CrN grown on sapphire exhibits a FM response at room temperature [10]. It is still contradictory that how the microstructures including the surfaces and interfaces, and magnetic properties are correlated in these nitrides [11,12]. In recent years, the research of doped lanthanum manganese oxides with perovskite structure has generated considerable interest in fabri- cating thin film heterojunction as magnetic field sensors and high- density memory [13–15]. The LSMO apart from its room-temperature FM behavior, is also an electrically conductive oxide with good thermal stability [16]. Moreover, LSMO has the pseudo-cubic structure with a lattice parameter a = 0.39 nm and angle α = 89.75°, which matches CrN closely whose unit cell is cubic with a parameter a = 0.41 nm [17,18]. The lattice mismatch between the CrN and the LSMO is about 5.7%. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate the viability of LSMO as an interface and substrate for CrN. Especially, the magnetic properties for CrN films grown on LSMO have still received little attention to our best knowledge. Here, we report the high-quality CrN grown on LSMO templates. The thin films are investigated by means of high resolution X-ray dif- fraction (HR-XRD), atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Additionally, the density functional theory (DFT) is used to understand the magnetic interaction at the interface between (001) CrN and (001) LSMO. 2. Experiments and calculations CrN thin films have been grown by the radio-frequency plasma as- sisted MBE (SVTA 35V-2) on LSMO templates which had been grown on SrTiO 3 buffer layers using by pulse laser deposition on Si (001) sub- strates. High-purity N 2 and Cr are used as the sources. After thermally cleaning the substrates at 500 °C for 10 min, a high temperature CrN layer grows at 700 °C. Finally, a CrN layer grows at 600 °C. The N 2 flow https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cap.2018.07.012 Received 15 March 2018; Received in revised form 15 June 2018; Accepted 13 July 2018 * Corresponding author. Henan Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials, School of Physics and Materials Science, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China. E-mail address: zpzhou@htu.edu.cn (Z. Zhou). Current Applied Physics xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 1567-1739/ © 2018 Korean Physical Society. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Zhang, D., Current Applied Physics (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cap.2018.07.012