Structural and magnetic quality of epitaxial spinel ferrite thin films grown by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition

Spinel ferrite thin films have a potential to establish room-temperature spin-filtering, which has practical applications in emerging logic, memory, and sensor devices. The real-life device applications require fabrication processes that are compatible with large-scale manufacturing and microelectronics processing conditions. To address this need, we have developed a plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) methodology for high-quality epitaxial Ni- and Co ferrite thin films ((Ni,Co)Fe2O4) with room-temperature ferrimagnetic properties. We will use polarised neutron reflectometry (PNR) to measure the magnetisation profile of these films, and investigate their magnetic uniformity and presence of dead layers at the film/substrate interface or film surface. This information in critical for the future steps of film integration in CMOS-based spin filter devices.