Strontium-doped lanthanum manganite films prepared via chemical solution deposition using different chelating agents

Abstract

The fabrication of high-quality strontium-doped lanthanum manganite films remains a challenge up to this date. One of the best candidate for simple and efficient fabrication of high-quality films is the chemical solution deposition (CSD) method. In CSD, the resulting film quality strongly depends on the precursor material used, i.e. nitrate or acetate route, the chelating agents, and heat treatment parameters. In this work, we focus our investigation on the effect of using different chelating agents to the resulting surface morphology of La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ film fabricated via the acetate-based CSD. The result shows that among the chelating agents used in this work, the citric acid as the sole chelating agent produced the best quality film in terms of surface quality and grain connectivity.