- Araujo, C Moyses;
- Nagar, Sandeep;
- Ramzan, Muhammad;
- Shukla, R;
- Jayakumar, OD;
- Tyagi, AK;
- Liu, Yi-Sheng;
- Chen, Jeng-Lung;
- Glans, Per-Anders;
- Chang, Chinglin;
- Blomqvist, Andreas;
- Lizárraga, Raquel;
- Holmström, Erik;
- Belova, Lyubov;
- Guo, Jinghua;
- Ahuja, Rajeev;
- Rao, KV
We report an unusual robust ferromagnetic order above room temperature upon amorphization of perovskite [YCrO3] in pulsed laser deposited thin films. This is contrary to the usual expected formation of a spin glass magnetic state in the resulting disordered structure. To understand the underlying physics of this phenomenon, we combine advanced spectroscopic techniques and first-principles calculations. We find that the observed order-disorder transformation is accompanied by an insulator-metal transition arising from a wide distribution of Cr-O-Cr bond angles and the consequent metallization through free carriers. Similar results also found in YbCrO3-films suggest that the observed phenomenon is more general and should, in principle, apply to a wider range of oxide systems. The ability to tailor ferromagnetic order above room temperature in oxide materials opens up many possibilities for novel technological applications of this counter intuitive effect.