Correlation between structural properties and resistivity critical behavior in SrRuO3 thin films

SrRuO3 is a strong itinerant ferromagnet showing many features of 'bad metals' together with Fermi liquid behavior at very low temperature. The intriguing magnetic and transport properties of SrRuO3 are tightly related to structure, as commonly observed in transition metal oxides. Here we report on the correlation of structural parameters (lattice constant and surface roughness) with the critical behavior of resistivity at the Curie point in SrRuO3 thin films deposited on (001) SrTiO3 by PLD. By varying the deposition conditions we were able to obtain a wide variety of structural properties in our samples, thus allowing us to perform a systematic study. Our analysis demonstrates the direct correlation between the critical temperature TP and the lattice out-of-plane parameter. Furthermore, the value of the critical exponent ? is proved to be a good physical parameter to quantify the microscopic order of SrRuO3 samples.