Epitaxial growth and properties of perovskite vanadate thin films

Perovskite vanadates have recently attracted significant attention for their wide range of functional properties.  Below around 140 K, LaVO₃ undergoes a structural transition, and becomes an orbitally-ordered antiferromagnetic insulator.  SrVO₃, on the other hand, remains a strongly correlated paramagnetic metal down the lowest measured temperature of 1.8 K.  In this work, we use oxygen-plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to deposit epitaxial LaVO₃ and SrVO₃ thin films on insulating SrTiO₃ substrates.  We use ex-situ x-ray diffraction, magnetotransport measurements, and SQUID magnetometry to compare the properties of (001) and (111)-oriented samples.