Competing misfit relaxation mechanisms in epitaxial correlated oxides

Strain engineering of functional properties in epitaxial thin films of strongly correlated oxides exhibiting octahedral-framework structures is hindered by the lack of adequate misfit relaxation models. Here we present unreported experimental evidence of a four-stage hierarchical development of octahedral-framework perturbations resulting from a progressive imbalance between electronic, elastic, and octahedral tilting energies in La 0.7Sr0.3MnO3 epitaxial thin films grown on SrTiO3 substrates. Electronic softening of the Mn-O bonds near the substrate leads to the formation of an interfacial layer clamped to the substrate with strongly degraded magnetotransport properties, i.e., the so-called dead layer, while rigid octahedral tilts become relevant at advanced growth stages without significant effects on charge transport and magnetic ordering. © 2013 American Physical Society.We acknowledge the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas for financial support and for provision of synchrotron radiation facilities in using beam line BM25-SpLine’’. This research was supported by Spanish MEC (Grants No. MAT2009-08024 and No. MAT2011-29081), CONSOLIDER (Grants No. CSD2007-00041 and No. CSD2008-00023), and FEDER program. Z. K. thanks the Spanish MEC for the financial support through the RyC program.Peer Reviewe