No Arabic abstract
This review provides a summary of the rich physics expressed within SrTiO$_3$-based heterostructures and nanostructures. The intended audience is researchers who are working in the field of oxides, but also those with different backgrounds (e.g., semiconductor nanostructures). After reviewing the relevant properties of SrTiO$_3$ itself, we will then discuss the basics of SrTiO$_3$-based heterostructures, how they can be grown, and how devices are typically fabricated. Next, we will cover the physics of these heterostructures, including their phase diagram and coupling between the various degrees of freedom. Finally, we will review the rich landscape of quantum transport phenomena, as well as the devices that elicit them.
In this paper we study LaAlO$_3$/Eu$_{1-x}$La$_x$TiO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ structures with nominally x = 0, 0.1 and different thicknesses of the Eu$_{1-x}$La$_x$TiO$_3$ layer. We observe that both systems have many properties similar to previously studied LaAlO$_3$/EuTiO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ and other oxide interfaces, such as the formation of a 2D electron liquid for 1 or 2 unit cells of Eu$_{1-x}$La$_x$TiO$_3$; a metal-insulator transition driven by the thickness increase of Eu$_{1-x}$La$_x$TiO$_3$ layer; the presence of an Anomalous Hall effect (AHE) when driving the systems above the Lifshitz point with a backgate voltage; and a minimum in the temperature dependence of the sheet resistance below the Lifshitz point in the one-band regime, which becomes more pronounced with increasing gate voltage. However, and notwithstanding the likely presence of magnetism in the system, we do not attribute that minimum to the Kondo effect, but rather to the properties of SrTiO$_3$ crystal and the inevitable effects of charge trapping when using back gates.
Using SrRuO3-based thin film heterostructures, we aim to resolve the two debated interpretations that distinguish between the genuine Topological Hall Effect (THE) and the artefactual humps produced from overlapping double Karplus-Luttinger Anomalous Hall Effects (KL-AHE), without magnetic imaging. Firstly, we selected two heterostructures with similar Hall Effect but with contrasting octahedral rotations/tilts, providing a clue to determining the presence/absence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction. Secondly, we employ the {theta}-rotation of magnetic field from out-of-plane to in-plane as the critical judgemental tool. The first heterostructure showing field-position of Hall hump diverging with ~1/cos({theta}) is correctly reproduced using the double KL-AHEs. Yet, the second one showing constant hump field versus {theta} behaviour agrees with a micromagnetic simulation with Neel-Skyrmions and is thus convincingly assigned as THE. Lastly, for a general system evolving with increasing magnetic field from two-dimensional Skyrmion-lattice into collinear ferromagnetic in the real-space, we further discuss about the corresponding evolution of k-space band structure from gapped massive Dirac Fermion into Weyl Fermion, consistent to past literatures. Its associated transformation from Mirror Anomaly into Chiral Anomaly is detectable via electrical transport and further assisted in resolving the aforementioned debate. We hence emphasize the two schemes as useful, generic electrical measurement protocols for future search of magnetic Skyrmions.
The rich phase diagram of the two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the STO/LAO interface is probed using Hall and longitudinal resistivity. Thanks to a special bridge design we are able to tune through the superconducting transition temperature T$_c$ and to mute superconductivity by either adding or removing carriers in a gate bias range of a few volts. Hall signal measurements pinpoint the onset of population of a second mobile band right at the carrier concentration where maximum superconducting T$_c$ and critical field H$_c$ occur. These results emphasize the advantages of our design, which can be applied to many other two dimensional systems assembled on top of a dielectric substrate with high permittivity.
The possibility of investigating the dynamics of solids on timescales faster than the thermalization of the internal degrees of freedom has disclosed novel non-equilibrium phenomena that have no counterpart at equilibrium. Transition metal oxides (TMOs) provide an interesting playground in which the correlations among the charges in the metal $d$-orbitals give rise to a wealth of intriguing electronic and thermodynamic properties involving the spin, charge, lattice and orbital orders. Furthermore, the physical properties of TMOs can be engineered at the atomic level, thus providing the platform to investigate the transport phenomena on timescales of the order of the intrinsic decoherence time of the charge excitations. Here, we review and discuss three paradigmatic examples of transient emerging properties that are expected to open new fields of research: i) the creation of non-thermal magnetic states in spin-orbit Mott insulators; ii) the possible exploitation of quantum paths for the transport and collection of charge excitations in TMO-based few-monolayers devices; iii) the transient wave-like behavior of the temperature field in strongly anisotropic TMOs.
We measure the gate voltage ($V_g$) dependence of the superconducting properties and the spin-orbit interaction in the (111)-oriented LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interface. Superconductivity is observed in a dome-shaped region in the carrier density-temperature phase diagram with the maxima of superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ and the upper critical fields lying at the same $V_g$. The spin-orbit interaction determined from the superconducting parameters and confirmed by weak-antilocalization measurements follows the same gate voltage dependence as $T_c$. The correlation between the superconductivity and spin-orbit interaction as well as the enhancement of the parallel upper critical field, well beyond the Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit suggest that superconductivity and the spin-orbit interaction are linked in a nontrivial fashion. We propose possible scenarios to explain this unconventional behavior.