In this study, we report the epitaxial growth of Fe3O4 (1 1 1) on SrTiO3 (0 0 1) substrates, which has a large apparent lattice mismatch of 52%, from an alpha-Fe2O3 target. This unexpected orientation is formed via the reduction of alpha-Fe2O3 into Fe3O4, which is encapsulated in a SrTiO3 capping layer. A lattice interface model based on in-plane Phi scans was developed to describe the epitaxial relationship. This method has potential for low cost planar spintronics device fabrication. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.