Abstract
YbMnO3 films were grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on (111) Pt/(0001) sapphire substrates. To investigate the ablation conditions, the plasma plume of YbMnO3 was analyzed by optical emission spectrometry (OES). It was found that Mn is ablated from a target more easily than Yb at the initial period of the deposition. Therefore, deposition was initiated after the plasma plume had become stable. After the optimization of the deposition conditions, YbMnO3(0001) films with stoichiometric composition were obtained at a substrate temperature of 760 °C and a deposition pressure of 50 mTorr. The YbMnO3 films showed a distinct ferroelectric polarization–electric field hysteresis loop with a remanent polarization of 1.4 µC/cm2 at room temperature. Ferromagnetic behavior was also observed when the magnetization measurements were performed by applying a magnetic field along the c-axis of YbMnO3 below 70 K.