No Arabic abstract
La0.9Ba0.1MnO3 is a ferromagnetic insulator in its bulk form, but exhibits metallicity in thin film form. It has a wide potential in a range of spintronic-related applications, and hence it is critical to understand thickness-dependent electronic structure in thin films as well as substrate/film interface effects. Here, using electrical and in-situ photoemission spectroscopy measurements, we report the electronic structure and interface band profile of high-quality layer-by-layer-grown La0.9Ba0.1MnO3 on single crystal Nb:SrTiO3 substrates. A transition from insulating-to-conducting was observed with increasing La0.9Ba0.1MnO3 thickness, which was explained by the determined interface band diagram of La0.9Ba0.1MnO3/Nb: SrTiO3, where a type II heterojunction was formed.
SrRuO3 (SRO), a conducting transition metal oxide, is commonly used for engineering domains in BiFeO3. New oxide devices can be envisioned by integrating SRO with an oxide semiconductor as Nb doped SrTiO3 (Nb:STO). Using a three-terminal device configuration, we study vertical transport in a SRO/Nb:STO device at the nanoscale and find local differences in transport, that originate due to the high selectivity of SRO growth on the underlying surface terminations in Nb:STO. This causes a change in the interface energy band characteristics and is explained by the differences in the spatial distribution of the interface-dipoles at the local Schottky interface.
We show that the growth of the heterostructure LaGaO3/SrTiO3 yields the formation of a highly conductive interface. Our samples were carefully analyzed by high resolution electron microscopy, in order to assess their crystal perfection and to evaluate the abruptness of the interface. Their carrier density and sheet resistance are compared to the case of LaAlO3/SrTiO3 and a superconducting transition is found. The results open the route to widening the field of polar-non polar interfaces, pose some phenomenological constrains to their underlying physics and highlight the chance of tailoring their properties for future applications by adopting suitable polar materials.
Hot electron transport of direct and scattered carriers across an epitaxial NiSi_2/n-Si(111) interface, for different NiSi_2 thickness, is studied using Ballistic Electron Emission Microscopy (BEEM). We find the BEEM transmission for the scattered hot electrons in NiSi_2 to be significantly lower than that for the direct hot electrons, for all thicknesses. Interestingly, the attenuation length of the scattered hot electrons is found to be twice larger than that of the direct hot electrons. The lower BEEM transmission for the scattered hot electrons is due to inelastic scattering of the injected hot holes while the larger attenuation length of the scattered hot electrons is a consequence of the differences in the energy distribution of the injected and scattered hot electrons and the increasing attenuation length, at lower energies, of the direct hot electrons in NiSi_2.
Localization of electrons in the two-dimensional electron gas at the LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interface is investigated by varying the channel thickness in order to establish the nature of the conducting channel. Layers of SrTiO$_3$ were grown on NdGaO$_3$ (110) substrates and capped with LaAlO$_3$. When the SrTiO$_3$ thickness is $leq 6$ unit cells, most electrons at the interface are localized, but when the number of SrTiO$_3$ layers is 8-16, the free carrier density approaches $3.3 times 10^{14}$ cm$^{-2}$, the value corresponding to charge transfer of 0.5 electron per unit cell at the interface. The number of delocalized electrons decreases again when the SrTiO$_3$ thickness is $geq 20$ unit cells. The $sim{4}$ nm conducting channel is therefore located significantly below the interface. The results are explained in terms of Anderson localization and the position of the mobility edge with respect to the Fermi level.
We derive the theory of the quantum (zero temperature) superconductor to metal transition in disordered materials when the resistance of the normal metal near criticality is small compared to the quantum of resistivity. This can occur most readily in situations in which ``Andersons theorem does not apply. We explicitly study the transition in superconductor-metal composites, in an s-wave superconducting film in the presence of a magnetic field, and in a low temperature disordered d-wave superconductor. Near the point of the transition, the distribution of the superconducting order parameter is highly inhomogeneous. To describe this situation we employ a procedure which is similar to that introduced by Mott for description of the temperature dependence of the variable range hopping conduction. As the system approaches the point of the transition from the metal to the superconductor, the conductivity of the system diverges, and the Wiedemann-Franz law is violated. In the case of d-wave (or other exotic) superconductors we predict the existence of (at least) two sequential transitions as a function of increasing disorder: a d-wave to s-wave, and then an s-wave to metal transition.