No Arabic abstract
As a prototypical Mott insulator with ferromagnetic ordering, YTiO3 (YTO) is of great interest in the study of strong electron correlation effects and orbital ordering. Here we report the first molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of YTO films, combined with theoretical and experimental characterization of the electronic structure and charge transport properties. The obstacles of YTO MBE growth are discussed and potential routes to overcome them are proposed. DC transport and Seebeck measurements on thin films and bulk single crystals identify p-type Arrhenius transport behavior, with an activation energy of ~ 0.17 eV in thin films, consistent with the energy barrier for small hole polaron migration from hybrid density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements (HAXPES) show the lower Hubbard band (LHB) at 1.1 eV below the Fermi level, whereas a Mott-Hubbard band gap of ~1.5 eV is determined from photoluminescence (PL) measurements. These findings provide critical insight into the electronic band structure of YTO and related materials.
The electronic structures of substitutional rare-earth (RE) impurities in GaAs and cubic GaN are calculated. The total energy is evaluated with the self-interaction corrected local spin density approximation, by which several configurations of the open 4f shell of the rare-earth ion may be investigated. The defects are modelled by supercells of type REGa$_{n-1}$As$_n$, for n=4, 8 and 16. The preferred defect is the rare-earth substituting Ga, for which case the rare-earth valency in intrinsic material is found to be trivalent in all cases except Ce and Pr in GaN. The 3+ --> 2+ f-level is found above the theoretical conduction band edge in all cases and within the experimental gap only for Eu, Tm and Yb in GaAs and for Eu in GaN. The exchange interaction of the rare-earth impurity with the states at both the valence band maximum and the conduction band minimum is weak, one to two orders of magnitude smaller than that of Mn impurities. Hence the coupling strength is insufficient to allow for ferromagnetic ordering of dilute impurities, except at very low temperatures.
The effects of tetragonal strain on electronic and magnetic properties of strontium-doped lanthanum manganite, La_{2/3}Sr_{1/3}MnO_3 (LSMO), are investigated by means of density-functional methods. As far as the structural properties are concerned, the comparison between theory and experiments for LSMO strained on the most commonly used substrates, shows an overall good agreement: the slight overestimate (at most of 1-1.5 %) for the equilibrium out-of-plane lattice constants points to possible defects in real samples. The inclusion of a Hubbard-like contribution on the Mn d states, according to the so-called LSDA+U approach, is rather ineffective from the structural point of view, but much more important from the electronic and magnetic point of view. In particular, full half-metallicity, which is missed within a bare density-functional approach, is recovered within LSDA+U, in agreement with experiments. Moreover, the half-metallic behavior, particularly relevant for spin-injection purposes, is independent on the chosen substrate and is achieved for all the considered in-plane lattice constants. More generally, strain effects are not seen to crucially affect the electronic structure: within the considered tetragonalization range, the minority gap is only slightly (i.e. by about 0.1-0.2 eV) affected by a tensile or compressive strain. Nevertheless, we show that the growth on a smaller in-plane lattice constant can stabilize the out-of-plane vs in-plane e_g orbital and significatively change their relative occupancy. Since e_g orbitals are key quantities for the double-exchange mechanism, strain effects are confirmed to be crucial for the resulting magnetic coupling.
High-quality (001)-oriented (pseudo-cubic notation) ferromagnetic YTiO$_3$ thin films were epitaxially synthesized in a layer-by-layer way by pulsed laser deposition. Structural, magnetic and electronic properties were characterized by reflection-high-energy-electron-diffraction, X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometry, and element-resolved resonant soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. To reveal ferromagnetism of the constituent titanium ions, X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy was carried out using four detection modes probing complimentary spatial scale, which overcomes a challenge of probing ferromagnetic titanium with pure Ti3+(3d$^1$). Our work provides a pathway to distinguish between the roles of titanium and A-site magnetic rare-earth cations in determining the magnetism in rare-earth titanates thin films and heterostructures.
We present a study of the electronic and magnetic properties of the multiple-decker sandwich nanowires ($CP-M$) composed of cyclopentadienyl (CP) rings and 3d transition metal atoms (M=Ti to Ni) using first-principles techniques. We demonstrate using Density Functional Theory that structural relaxation play an important role in determining the magnetic ground-state of the system. Notably, the computed magnetic moment is zero in $CP-Mn$, while in $CP-V$ a significant turn-up in magnetic moment is evidenced. Two compounds show a half-metallic ferromagnetic ground state $CP-Fe/Cr$ with a gap within minority/majority spin channel. In order to study the effect of electronic correlations upon the half-metallic ground states in $CP-Cr$, we introduce a simplified three-bands Hubbard model which is solved within the Variational Cluster Approach. We discuss the results as a function of size of the reference cluster and the strength of average Coulomb $U$ and exchange $J$ parameters. Our results demonstrate that for the range of studied parameters $U=2-4eV$ and $J=0.6-1.2eV$ the half-metallic character is not maintained in the presence of local Coulomb interactions.
The {em around-mean-field} LSDA+U correlated band theory is applied to investigate the electronic and magnetic structure of $fcc$-Pu-Am alloys. Despite a lattice expansion caused by the Am atoms, neither tendency to 5$f$ localization nor formation of local magnetic moments on Pu atoms in Pu-Am alloys are found. The $5f$-manifolds in the alloys are calculated being very similar to a simple weighted superposition of elemental Pu and Am $5f$-states.