Fe3O4 thin films: controlling and manipulating an elusive quantum material

Fe3O4 (magnetite) is one of the most elusive quantum materials and at the same time one of the most studied transition metal oxide materials for thin-film applications. The theoretically expected half-metallic behaviour generates high expectations that it can be used in spintronic devices. Yet, despite the tremendous amount of work devoted to preparing thin films, the enigmatic first-order metal-insulator transition, and the hallmark of magnetite known as the Verwey transition, is in thin films extremely broad and occurs at substantially lower temperatures as compared with that in high-quality bulk single crystals. Here we have succeeded in finding and making a particular class of substrates that allows the growth of magnetite thin films with the Verwey transition as sharp as in the bulk. Moreover, we are now able to tune the transition temperature and, using tensile strain, increase it to substantially higher values than in the bulk.