Light emission and magnetic properties of aluminum films grown on SrTiO3 by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

Aluminum films were grown on SrTiO3 (100) substrates using a plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy system. We found that the intensity of defect emission coming through the Al films was enhanced to two fold. Although the surface plasmon energy is far from the defect emission, off-resonance enhancement is still possible from Al/SrTiO3. Moreover, the samples with Al films exhibits ferromagnetism, with wasp-waist hysteresis loops and exchange bias effects. The ferromagnetism may be attributed to the charge transfer between Al and the SrTiO3 matrix. This work is valuable in developing SrTiO3 which is a promising material used in optical and magnetic related application.