  Over the past few years, intensive studies of ultrathin epitaxial films of
perovskite oxides have often revealed exciting properties like giant
magnetoresistive tunnelling and electric field effects. Spinel oxides appear as
even more versatile due to their more complex structure and the resulting many
degrees of freedom. Here we show that the epitaxial growth of nanometric
NiFe2O4 films onto perovskite substrates allows the stabilization of novel
ferrite phases with properties dramatically differing from bulk ones. Indeed,
NiFe2O4 films few nanometres thick have a saturation magnetization at least
twice that of the bulk compound and their resistivity can be tuned by orders of
magnitude, depending on the growth conditions. By integrating such thin NiFe2O4
layers into spin-dependent tunnelling heterostructures, we demonstrate that
this versatile material can be useful for spintronics, either as a conductive
electrode in magnetic tunnel junctions or as a spin-filtering insulating
barrier in the little explored type of tunnel junction called spin-filter. Our
findings are thus opening the way for the realisation of monolithic spintronics
architectures integrating several layers of a single material, where the layers
are functionalised in a controlled manner.
