Defect engineering in oxide thin films

Transition metal oxides constitute one of the most interesting material classes due to their wide variety of interesting and unusual properties. Often these properties are closely related to their defect structure. Within the transition metal oxide community SrTiO$_{3}$ is often referred to as a model material due to its well known defect chemistry. Therefore, in this work the possibilities of defect engineering are considered for this model material and the resulting properties are utilized for a highly interesting application: Resistive switching of SrTiO$_{3}$ in a metal insulator metal structure, a field of research where defects are key for the basic operation principle. The interest in transition metal oxides has been accompanied by an increased use of pulsed laser deposition, since it is a powerful and versatile method to achieve epitaxial complex metal oxide thin films. [...