Magnetoelastic coupling in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3/BaTiO3 ultrathin films

The magnetism of La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 (LCMO) epitaxial thin films grown on SrTiO3 (STO) and BaTiO3 (BTO) substrates is studied using polarized neutron reflectometry (PNR) and ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) techniques. In LCMO/BTO, PNR reveals a strongly suppressed magnetization of 300 kA/m, equivalent to a magnetic moment of 2 mu B/Mn, throughout the LCMO layer, amounting to half the expected value. The largest suppression occurs near the interface with BTO, with magnetization values of 50 kA/m, equivalent to 0.3 mu B/Mn. FMR is observable at 8.9 GHz only around the [110] crystallographic direction in thin LCMO/BTO. The resonance barely shifts as the applied field is rotated away from [110]. The FMR results are analyzed in terms of magnetoelastic anisotropy and compared to LCMO/STO grown under the same conditions. A two-layer magnetization model is proposed, based on strong out-of-plane anisotropy near the BTO interface and shown to qualitatively explain the main characteristics of the FMR results.