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Register a new userManipulating Multiple Order Parameters via Oxygen Vacancies: The case of Eu0.5Ba0.5TiO3-{delta}
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Controlling functionalities, such as magnetism or ferroelectricity, by means of oxygen vacancies (VO) is a key issue for the future development of transition metal oxides. Progress in this field is currently addressed through VO variations and their impact on mainly one order parameter. Here we reveal a new mechanism for tuning both magnetism and ferroelectricity simultaneously by using VO. Combined experimental and density-functional theory studies of Eu0.5Ba0.5TiO3-{delta}, we demonstrate that oxygen vacancies create Ti3+ 3d1 defect states, mediating the ferromagnetic coupling between the localized Eu 4f7 spins, and increase an off-center displacement of Ti ions, enhancing the ferroelectric Curie temperature. The dual function of Ti sites also promises a magnetoelectric coupling in the Eu0.5Ba0.5TiO3-{delta}.
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The ability to manipulate oxygen anion defects rather than metal cations in complex oxides can facilitate creating new functionalities critical for emerging energy and device technologies. However, the difficulty in activating oxygen at reduced temperatures hinders the deliberate control of important defects, oxygen vacancies. Here, strontium cobaltite (SrCoOx) is used to demonstrate that epitaxial strain is a powerful tool for manipulating the oxygen vacancy concentration even under highly oxidizing environments and at annealing temperatures as low as 300 C. By applying a small biaxial tensile strain (2%), the oxygen activation energy barrier decreases by ~30%, resulting in a tunable oxygen deficient steady-state under conditions that would normally fully oxidize unstrained cobaltite. These strain-induced changes in oxygen stoichiometry drive the cobaltite from a ferromagnetic metal towards an antiferromagnetic insulator. The ability to decouple the oxygen vacancy concentration from its typical dependence on the operational environment is useful for effectively designing oxides materials with a specific oxygen stoichiometry.
The consideration of oxygen vacancies influence on the relaxors with perovskite structure was considered in the framework of Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire phenomenological theory. The theory applicability for relaxors is based on the existence of some hidden soft phonon polar mode in them, and its frequency could be zero at some negative temperature TC*. Main attention was paid to PZN-PLZT relaxor described by formula 0.3Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.7(Pb0.96La0.04(ZrxTi1-x)0.99O3) with x = 0.52, where earlier experimental investigation of oxygen vacancies influence on the polar properties was performed and the evidence of oxygen vacancies induced ferroelectricity was obtained. Since the oxygen vacancies are known to be elastic dipoles, they influence upon elastic and electric fields due to Vegard and flexoelectric coupling. We include the vacancies elastic and electrostrictive contribution into free energy functional. The calculations of the vacancies impact on polar properties were performed using their concentration distribution function. It was shown that the negative Curie temperature of a relaxor TC* is renormalized by the elastic dipoles due to the electrostrictive coupling and can become positive at some large enough concentration of the vacancies. We calculated the local polarization and electric field induced by the flexo-chemical coupling in dependence on the concentration of oxygen vacancies. The coexistence of FE phase and relaxor state can take place because of inhomogeneity of vacancies concentration distribution.
Using density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations with the HSE06 hybrid functional, we accurately evaluate the critical thickness of LaAlO3 film for the intrinsic doping in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) heterstructures. The calculated critical thickness of 6 unit-cell (uc) layers suggests to rule out the intrinsic doping mechanism. We also calculate the density of oxygen vacancies on the LAO surface at varying LAO thicknesses, preparation oxygen pressures and temperatures by using the condition of chemical equilibrium and DFT calculations. We find that once LAO thickness >=3 uc high-density (~ 10^14 cm^-2 ) oxygen vacancies will inevitably exist on the LAO surface of the LAO/STO heterstructures even though the samples are grown under high oxygen pressure. The oxygen vacancies are stabilized by releasing the electrostatic energy in the LAO film.
Modifications of the electronic bands of thin FeSe films due to oxygen vacancies in the supporting SrTiO 3 (001) substrate - and the interplay with spin-orbit coupling, magnetism, and epitaxy - are investigated by first-principles supercell calculations. Unfolded (k-projected) bands show that the oxygen vacancies both provide electron doping to the interface FeSe layer and also have notable effects on the details of the bands around the Fermi level, including renormalizing the width of the Fe-3d band near the Fermi level by a factor of about 0.6, and causing a splitting of ~40 meV at the M point for the checkerboard antiferromagnetic configuration. For an FeSe bilayer, the modifications to the bands are mainly limited to the interface FeSe layer. While spin-orbit-coupling induced band splittings of ~30 meV at M for the ideal FeSe/SrTiO3 (001) interfaces are comparable to the splitting due to oxygen vacancies, the effects are not simply additive. Calculations and comparison to our scanning tunneling microscopy images of MBE-grown FeSe films on SrTiO3 (001) suggest that a common defect may be Se bound to an oxygen vacancy at the interface
Contradictory theoretical results for oxygen vacancies in SrTiO$_3$ (STO) were often related to the peculiar properties of STO, which is a $d^0$ transition metal oxide with mixed ionic-covalent bonding. Here, we apply, for the first time, density functional theory (DFT) within the extended Hubbard DFT+$U$+$V$ approach, including on-site as well as inter-site electronic interactions, to study oxygen-deficient STO with Hubbard $U$ and $V$ parameters computed self-consistently via density-functional perturbation theory. Our results demonstrate that the extended Hubbard functional is a promising approach to study defects in materials with electronic properties similar to STO. Indeed, DFT+$U$+$V$ provides a better description of stoichiometric STO compared to standard DFT or DFT+$U$, the band gap and crystal field splitting being in good agreement with experiments. In turn, also the description of the electronic properties of oxygen vacancies in STO is improved, with formation energies in excellent agreement with experiments as well as results obtained with the most frequently used hybrid functionals, however at a fraction of the computational cost. While our results do not fully resolve the contradictory findings reported in literature, our systematic approach leads to a deeper understanding of their origin, which stems from different cell sizes, STO phases, the exchange-correlation functional, and the treatment of structural relaxations and spin-polarization.
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