Oxygen vacancies in strained SrTiO3_{3} thin films: formation enthalpy and manipulation

We report the enthalpy of oxygen vacancy formation in thin films of electron-doped SrTiO$_{3}$, under different degrees of epitaxial stress. We demonstrate that both compressive and tensile strain decrease this energy at a very similar rate, and promote the formation of stable doubly ionized oxygen vacancies. Moreover, we also show that unintentional cationic vacancies introduced under typical growth conditions, produce a characteristic rotation pattern of TiO$_6$ octahedra. The local concentration of oxygen vacancies can be modulated by an electric field with an AFM tip, changing not only the local electrical potential, but also producing a non-volatile mechanical response whose sign (up/down) can be reversed by the electric field.Comment: Physical Review B (accepted for publication

Electron degeneracy and intrinsic magnetic properties of epitaxial Nb:SrTiO3_3 thin-films controlled by defects

We report thermoelectric power experiments in e-doped thin films of SrTiO$_3$ (STO) which demonstrate that the electronic band degeneracy can be lifted through defect management during growth. We show that even small amounts of cationic vacancies, combined with epitaxial stress, produce a homogeneous tetragonal distortion of the films, resulting in a Kondo-like resistance upturn at low temperature, large anisotropic magnetoresistance, and non-linear Hall effect. Ab-initio calculations confirm a different occupation of each band depending on the degree of tetragonal distortion. The phenomenology reported in this paper for tetragonally distorted e-doped STO thin films, is similarto that observed in LaAlO$_3$/STO interfaces and magnetic STO quantum wells.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Integrality gaps of semidefinite programs for Vertex Cover and relations to ell1_1 embeddability of negative type metrics

We study various SDP formulations for Vertex Cover by adding different constraints to the standard formulation. We rule out approximations better than even when we add the so-called pentagonal inequality constraints to the standard SDP formulation, and thus almost meet the best upper bound known due to Karakostas, of . We further show the surprising fact that by strengthening the SDP with the (intractable) requirement that the metric interpretation of the solution embeds into &#8467;1 with no distortion, we get an exact relaxation (integrality gap is 1), and on the other hand if the solution is arbitrarily close to being &#8467;1 embeddable, the integrality gap is 2&#8201;&#8722;&#8201;o(1). Finally, inspired by the above findings, we use ideas from the integrality gap construction of Charikar to provide a family of simple examples for negative type metrics that cannot be embedded into &#8467;1 with distortion better than 8/7&#8201;&#8722;&#8201;&#949;. To this end we prove a new isoperimetric inequality for the hypercube. </div

M-SrFe12O19 and ferrihydrite-like ultrathin nanoplatelets as building blocks for permanent magnets: HAADF-STEM study and magnetic properties

Mixtures of M-type strontium hexaferrite (M-SrFe12O19) and ferrihydrite-like particles were prepared by a microwave-assisted hydrothermal process at 200 °C with heating rates in the range 40–50 °C min-1. The particles exhibited a platelet shape with a diameter comprised between 20 and 200 nm and a thickness between 2 and 5 nm. HAADF-STEM observations and EDS analysis were carried out for a better understanding of nucleation and growth process. EDS showed that most of the particles contained Sr and HAADF-STEM revealed that very thin particles with a hexaferrite core extending over less than a unit cell and with surface disorder crystallized along with well crystallized hexaferrite and defect free ferrihydrite particles. The symmetric multilayer structures (SRS) of the ultrathin particles suggested that the nucleation step of the hexaferrite particles involved clusters containing Sr atoms. In comparison with the M-SrFe12O19 micrometer sized platelets prepared with heating rate of 25 °C min-1, the mixtures of ultrathin hexaferrite- and ferrihydrite-like particles combined after annealing a higher coercivity reaching 465 kA m-1 thanks to the smaller initial particle size and a high magnetization reaching 65 A m2 kg-1 thanks to a limited amount of hematite

Randomized Extended Kaczmarz for Solving Least-Squares

We present a randomized iterative algorithm that exponentially converges in expectation to the minimum Euclidean norm least squares solution of a given linear system of equations. The expected number of arithmetic operations required to obtain an estimate of given accuracy is proportional to the square condition number of the system multiplied by the number of non-zeros entries of the input matrix. The proposed algorithm is an extension of the randomized Kaczmarz method that was analyzed by Strohmer and Vershynin.Comment: 19 Pages, 5 figures; code is available at https://github.com/zouzias/RE

Structural and magnetic properties of amorphous Co-W alloyed nanoparticles

18 páginas, 20 figuras, 4 tablas.-- PACS number(s): 75.75.Fk, 75.50.Kj, 75.30.Gw, 61.46.Df.-- et al.et al.W-capped Co nanoparticles dispersed in an alumina matrix are studied by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, extended x-ray absorption fine structure, SQUID-based magnetic measurements, dc magnetization, ac magnetic susceptibility, and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism. Results show the formation of amorphous Co-W alloy nanoparticles, the magnetic properties of which are modified by the amount of W or Co present in the samples. The average Co magnetic moment depends on the number of W atoms surrounding it. Co-W particles show superparamagnetic behavior and are described as an array of noninteracting particles with random anisotropy axes and an average moment per particle proportional to the particle volume and to the average Co moment for each alloy composition. Values of the magnetic anisotropy constant of the particles are on the order of 106 erg/cm3, higher than that of bulk Co. Evidence of short-range ordering within each amorphous particle is found that provides insight of the origin of their magnetic anisotropy.The financial support of MICINN-FEDER MAT08/1077 and Aragonese IMANA project is acknowledged. A.I.F. acknowledges a CSIC JAE2008-Predoc grant.Peer reviewe

Reduction of thermal conductivity in ferroelectric SrTiO3 thin films

Bulk SrTiO3 is a quantum paraelectric in which an antiferrodistortive distortion below approximate to 105 K and quantum fluctuations at low temperature preclude the stabilization of a long-range ferroelectric state. However, biaxial mechanical stress, impurity doping, and Sr nonstoichiometry, among other mechanisms, are able to stabilize a ferroelectric or relaxor ferroelectric state at room temperature, which develops into a longer-range ferroelectric state below 250 K. In this paper, we show that epitaxial SrTiO3 thin films grown under tensile strain on DyScO3 exhibit a large reduction of thermal conductivity, approximate to 60% of at room temperature, with respect to identical strain-free or compressed films. The thermal conductivity shows a further reduction below 250 K, a temperature concurrent with the peak in the dielectric constant [J. H. Haeni et al., Nature (London) 430, 758 (2004)]. These results suggest that strain gradients in the relaxor and ferroelectric phase of SrTiO3 are very effective phonon scatterers, limiting the thermal transport in this material