Interfacial coupling-induced distinct magnetic structure in La1/2Sr1/2CoO2.5+δ/La2/3Sr1/3MnO3/ La1/2Sr1/2CoO2.5+δ heterostructure

Abstract

The interfacial coupling between electron correlated complex oxides opens a promising avenue for achieving new forms of magnetism that arises as a consequence of charge transfer, orbital reconstruction and symmetry-breaking. Herein we reported a distinct magnetic structure in La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 (LSMO) film sandwiched between La1/2Sr1/2CoO2.5+δ (LSCO) bilayer grown on (001)-oriented SrTiO3 substrates. It is found that the LSMO layer of heterostructure contains two independent components that are respectively free layer (free-LSMO) and coupled layer with LSCO (coupled-LSMO). The easy axis of the free-LSMO is in-plane, while it is out-of-plane directed for the coupled-LSMO layer. The thickness of these two parts in the LSMO layer are 4uc and 12uc respectively. This is in sharp contrast to the single LSMO layer on STO, for which the easy axis is always in film plane. Different from LSMO, the easy axis of LSCO is in-plane and is ferromagnetically coupled with LSMO. This distinct magnetic structure could be ascribed to orbital reconstruction due to symmetry-mismatch at interfaces.