Growth and structure of Fe Doped tetragonal CuO/STO(001)

Magnetic semiconducting thin films with high coercive field and remanence at room temperature are of primary importance for spintronic applications. We plan to realize such films by doping with iron a tetragonal CuO layer grown in epitaxy on SrTiO3(001). A key feature to obtain the desired properties is the Fe substitution of Cu in the CuO tetragonal structure. This configuration should result in a large magnetic superexchange interaction. We will use in situ non-resonant and resonant x-ray diffraction (RXD) to study the films structure. RXD, measured at the Fe K edge, allows to quantify the occupancy rate of the two cations on a same crystallographic site. At the same time GIXRD will allow to exclude the presence of spurious phases.