The Origin of Local Strain in Highly Epitaxial Oxide Thin Films

The ability to control the microstructures and physical properties of hetero-epitaxial functional oxide thin films and artificial structures is a long-sought goal in functional materials research. Normally, only the lattice misfit between the film and the substrate is considered to govern the physical properties of the epitaxial films. In fact, the mismatch of film unit cell arrangement and the Surface-Step-Terrace (SST) dimension of the substrate, named as "SST residual matching", is another key factor that significantly influence the properties of the epitaxial film. The nature of strong local strain induced from both lattice mismatch and the SST residual matching on ferroelectric (Ba,Sr)TiO3 and ferromagnetic (La,Ca)MnO3 thin films are systematically investigated and it is demonstrated that this combined effect has a dramatic impact on the physical properties of highly epitaxial oxide thin films. A giant anomalous magnetoresistance effect (~10(10)) was achieved from the as-designed vicinal surfaces.