Structure and magnetism of epitaxial PrVO3 films

The interplay between charge, spin, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom in transition metal oxides has motivated extensive research aiming to understand the coupling phenomena in these multifunctional materials. Among them, rare earth vanadates are Mott insulators characterized by spin and orbital orderings strongly influenced by lattice distortions. Using epitaxial strain as a means to tailor the unit cell deformation, we report here on the first thin films of PrVO3 grown on (001)-oriented SrTiO3 substrate by pulsed laser deposition. An extensive structural characterization of the PrVO3 films, combining x-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy studies, reveals the presence of oriented domains and a unit cell deformation tailored by the growth conditions. We have also investigated the physical properties of the PrVO3 films. We show that, while PrVO3 exhibits an insulating character, magnetic measurements indicate low-temperature hard-ferromagnetic behavior below 80 K. We discuss these properties in view of the thin-film structure.