Large Increase of the Curie Temperature by Orbital Ordering Control

Using first principle calculations we showed that the Curie temperature of manganites thin films can be increased by far more than an order of magnitude by applying appropriate strains. Our main breakthrough is that the control of the orbital ordering responsible for the spectacular T_C increase cannot be imposed by the substrate only. Indeed, the strains, first applied by the substrate, need to be maintained over the growth direction by the alternation of the manganite layers with another appropriate material. Following these theoretical findings, we synthesized such superlattices and verified our theoretical predictions.