Growth of Flexible NiFe2O4 Thin Films Via Van Der Waal Heteroepitaxy

The growth of high quality single crystalline NiFe
₂
O
₄
(NFO) thin films has been seriously pursued recently as a prime candidate for sensors, spin filter devices, circuit elements, memory, and magnetoelectric composites
^1-2
. This is due to the fact that inverse spinel NFO has high Curie temperature, high saturation magnetization, moderate magnetostriction, large exchange splitting and a wide band-gap. In this work, we demonstrate the epitaxial growth of NFO(111) thin films on flexible and transparent muscovite mica substrate via Van der Waal heteroepitaxy using pulsed laser deposition technique. Detailed structural and magnetic characterizations revealed that NFO thin films retain the inverse spinel structure and exhibit room temperature ferrimagnetism. The NFO was further integrated with a ferroelectric material for the realization of magnetoelectric phenomenon at microwave frequencies necessary for the electric field tunable microwave phase shifters and band-pass filters. Therefore, our approach not only offers great opportunities for next generation reconfigurable RF/microwave communication systems, Spintronics, magnetic field sensors, etc. but also provide a framework for realizing compact, light-weight, and ultralow power electronics and microwave devices.