Chemical vapor deposition and structural study of La0.8MnO3-δ thin films

We report here the synthesis of lacunar lanthanum manganites La0.8MnO3-delta by a liquid source metal organic chemical vapor deposition technique which has been developed recently in our laboratory. The role of the substrate temperature on the growth rate, on the molar ratio La/Mn and on the crystallinity is studied for films deposited on MgO (001) single crystals. A structural study by means of X-ray diffraction (theta/2 theta scans, omega-scans, phi-scans) and scanning electron microscopy (channeling electron patterns) has been achieved on lanthanum manganites films with the composition La-0.8 MnO3-delta grown on three kinds of substrates: MgO (001), LaAlO3 (012) and SrTiO3 (001). Films on LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 show an epitaxial quality with a small mosaicity in the plane of the substrate. Due to a bigger lattice mismatch with the substrate, films deposited on MgO present a worse crystalline quality with two types of epitaxially grown crystallites. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.