Room-Temperature Electrochemical Reduction of Epitaxial Magnetite Films to Epitaxial Iron Films

The electrochemical reduction of oxides to metals has been studied for decades. Earlier work produced polycrystalline bulk metals. Here, we report that pre-electrodeposited epitaxial face-centered cubic magnetite thin films can be electrochemically reduced to epitaxial body-centered cubic iron thin films in aqueous solution on single-crystalline gold substrates at room temperature. This technique opens new possibilities to produce special epitaxial metal/metal oxide heterojunctions and a wide range of epitaxial metallic alloy films from the corresponding mixed metal oxides.