The research interest of the group is twofold and focus on the preparation of high-quality complex oxide epitaxial thin films and on the advanced characterization of their magnetic and electronic transport properties. During this year we have proceeded with our work on the preparation of double perovskite thin films by polymer assisted deposition (PAD) techniques. The relevance of the annealing processes on the preparation of epitaxial films prepared by chemical solution deposition methods has been analyzed making evident how parameters, such as the heating ramp speed, may have strong influence in the final magnetic properties of the samples.

On the other hand, the work of the group has been mainly addressed to the study of spin dependent transport properties in ferromagnetic oxide/normal metal heterostructures. In particular, big efforts have concentrated in the generation and detection of pure spin currents by spin pumping and inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE) respectively. An important problem in spin pumping experiments in ferromagnetic and metallic (FM) systems is the appearance of spin rectification effects (SRE) due to the inductive coupling between the sample and the signal line of the coplanar waveguide (CPW) used to bring the RF excitation signal. Disentangle pure spin currents from parasitic effects due to SRE is a difficult task that is seriously hampering the implementation of SP in spin devices. We have developed a strategy that allows disentangling SRE and ISHE contributions to the transversal voltage signal measured in SP experiments in FM/normal metal (NM) bilayers.

The effectiveness has been proved in the permalloy (Py)/Pt system demonstrating that SRE in SP experiments, using a CPW or microstrip experimental setup, can be fully suppressed by reducing the width of the sample along the CPW signal line. At the same time, the group has also proceeded with the studies of reversible resistive switching (RS) phenomena, i.e. the change of resistance in a reversible manner between two stable states of well-defined resistance by applying voltage pulses. We have studied the local electrical properties, measured by conductive atomic force microscopy, of semimetallic SrIrO3 thin films demonstrating the appearance of an Anderson-type metal−insulator transition triggered by disorder and spatial localization due to film thickness reduction. For thin enough films (below ∼3 nm) samples are insulating with hysteretic I−V curves indicative of reversible resistive switching behavior between two states of clearly different resistance at room temperature.