EPITAXIAL SRRUO3 THIN-FILMS ON (001)SRTIO3

Highly conductive metallic oxide thin films of SrRuO3 with single crys talline quality have been grown on (001) SrTiO3 by using pulsed laser deposition. The films have a [001] orientation with an in-plane relati onship of [110](SrRuo3)//[100](SrTiO3). They have excellent metallic b ehavior with room temperature resistivity of similar to 310 mu Omega c m and a residual resistance ratio of about 7 at 4.2 K, the largest rep orted to date. A clear ferromagnetic transition at similar to 147 K wa s detected by resistivity and magnetic measurements. However, the tran sition becomes blurred as the density-of-point defects increases in th e films following a 400 keV proton irradiation with an accumulative do se up to similar to 6.0 X 10(16) ions/cm(2). (C) 1997 American Institu te of Physics.