The Mott-insulating rare-earth titanates (RTiO$_3$, R being a rare-earth ion) are an important class of materials that encompasses interesting spin-orbital phases as well as ferromagnet-antiferromagnet and insulator-metal transitions. The growth of these materials has been plagued by difficulties related to overoxidation, which arises from a strong tendency of Ti$^{3+}$ to oxidize to Ti$^{4+}$. We describe our efforts to grow sizable single crystals of YTiO$_3$ and its La-substituted and Ca-doped variants with the optical travelling-solvent floating-zone technique. We present sample characterization $via$ chemical composition analysis, magnetometry, charge transport, neutron scattering, x-ray absorption spectroscopy and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism to understand macroscopic physical property variations associated with overoxidation. Furthermore, we demonstrate a good signal-to-noise ratio in inelastic magnetic neutron scattering measurements of spin-wave excitations. A superconducting impurity phase, found to appear in Ca-doped samples at high doping levels, is identified as TiO.
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