Electronic and magnetic tunability of Sr2CrReO6 films by growth-mediated oxygen modulation

Highly ordered epitaxial films of ferrimagnetic semiconductor Sr2CrReO6 (SCRO) have been fabricated by off-axis magnetron sputtering, and characterized as a function of the oxygen partial pressure. In this Letter, we report 18 000% modulation in electrical resistivity at T = 7K (60% at room temperature) from a 1% modulation in the oxygen partial pressure during film growth. The growth window was centered at peak saturation magnetization, which drops due to both increasing and decreasing oxygen growth pressure. The results suggest that n-type doping due to oxygen vacancies plays a dominant role in the electrical properties and modulation of Sr2CrReO6 thin films. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789505]