Effect of biaxial strain on the electrical and magnetic properties of (001) La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 thin films

We have studied the effect of biaxial strain on thin films of (001) La0.7Sr0.3MnO3. We deposited films by reactive molecular-beam epitaxy on different single crystalline substrates, varying the substrate-induced biaxial strain from -2.3% to +3.2%. Magnetization and electrical transport measurements reveal that the dependence of the Curie temperature on biaxial strain is in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions of Millis et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 83, 1588 (1998)]. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3213346]