A study on the thermostability of LaNiO3 films

Thin LaNiO3-x films with pseudocubic (100) preferred orientation were prepared by rf magnetron sputtering and in situ annealed at 265 °C. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicate that the annealing did not cause the lattice distortion of the films. The electric conductivity, the refractive index and the extinction coefficient decrease exponentially as annealing time increases. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis manifested that the oxygen concentration in the LaNiO3-x film decreased 2.7% after 2 h annealing and the loss of the lattice oxygen in films led to the changes of the properties of the LaNiO3-x films.