The attractiveness of LaMnO3 based materials is growing over time due to their exceptional magnetoelectric properties. Their structure and properties can be relative easy manipulated by doping (for example with Sr2+, Ca2+, etc.) and corresponding epitaxial thin films become important for application in spintronics and data storage devices. Production of high-quality doped LaMnO3 thin films is usually based on expensive and complicated vapor deposition techniques, but recently chemical solution deposition techniques are also under consideration.
In this work, pure and Sr-doped LaMnO3 based thin films were prepared by water-based polymer assisted deposition (PAD) technique at different single crystal substrates in order to investigate the possibility of their epitaxial growth from a liquid phase. Stoichiometric amounts of metal cations were dissolved in distilled water with the addition of water-soluble polymers EDTA and PEI used as complexation agents. Aqueous solution of corresponding cations, stabilized with PEI and EDTA was deposited on single crystal substrates, MgO, SrTiO3 (001) and SrTiO3 (110), by spin-coating technique and heated at 750 °C. The as-prepared epitaxial films were annealed at different temperatures up to 900 °C. Structure and mechanisms of epitaxial film formation, as well as magnetoelectric properties of the obtained thin films were investigated.