Strain induced enhancement of magnetization in Ba2FeMoO6 based heterostructure with (BaxSr1-x)TiO3

High quality epitaxial Ba2FeMoO6 thin films and Ba2FeMoO6–(BaxSr1−x)TiO3 bi-layer (BL) and superlattice (SL) structures were grown via pulsed laser deposition under low oxygen pressure, and their structural, magnetic, and magneto-transport properties were examined. Superlattice and bi-layer structures were confirmed by X-ray diffraction patterns. Low temperature magnetic measurement shows that the saturation magnetization (MS ) is significantly higher for SLs and almost similar or lower for BLs, when compared to phase pure Ba2FeMoO6 thin films. The variation of the coercive field (HC ) follows exact opposite trend, where BL samples have higher HC and SL samples have lower HC than pure Ba2FeMoO6 thin films. Also, a significant decrease of the Curie temperature is found in both BL and SL structures compared to pure Ba2FeMoO6 thin films. Negative magneto-resistance is seen in all the BL and SL structures as well as in pure Ba2FeMoO6 thin films. In contrast to the magnetic properties, the magneto-transport properties do not show much variation with induced strain.