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Local electrostatic imaging of striped domain order in LaAlO3/SrTiO3

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 1112–1118 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The emerging field of complex oxide interfaces is generically built on one of the most celebrated substrates—strontium titanate (SrTiO3). This material hosts a range of phenomena, including ferroelasticity, incipient ferroelectricity, and most puzzlingly, contested giant piezoelectricity. Although these properties may markedly influence the oxide interfaces, especially on microscopic length scales, the lack of local probes capable of studying such buried systems has left their effects largely unexplored. Here we use a scanning charge detector—a nanotube single-electron transistor—to non-invasively image the electrostatic landscape and local mechanical response in the prototypical LaAlO3/SrTiO3 system with unprecedented sensitivity. Our measurements reveal that on microscopic scales SrTiO3 exhibits large anomalous piezoelectricity with curious spatial dependence. Through electrostatic imaging we unravel the microscopic origin for this extrinsic piezoelectricity, demonstrating its direct, quantitative connection to the motion of locally ordered tetragonal domains under applied gate voltage. These domains create striped potential modulations that can markedly influence the two-dimensional electron system at the conducting interface. Our results have broad implications to all complex oxide interfaces built on SrTiO3 and demonstrate the importance of microscopic structure to the physics of electrons at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface.

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Figure 1: Nanotube-based SET imaging.
Figure 2: Measurements of the local piezoelectric response.
Figure 3: Observation of tetragonal domains within STO.
Figure 4: Gate-induced domain motion.
Figure 5: Domain potential and influence on the LAO/STO 2DEG.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge S. Gariglio and J.-M. Triscone for providing the samples and for useful discussions and comments on the manuscript. We thank Y. Yacoby, B. Kalisky, E. Berg, E. Altman, P. Paruch, J. Ruhman, P. Zubko, L. Yu and A. Zunger for helpful discussions. We note that a previous experiment using a complementary scanning superconducting quantum interference device technique33 has observed enhanced conductivity due to tetragonal domain structure at this oxide interface. S.I. acknowledges financial support by the Israel Science Foundation (No. 1267/12), the Minerva Foundation, the ERC Starting Grant (QUANT-DES-CNT, No. 258753), and the Marie Curie People Grant (IRG, No. 239322).

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  1. M. Honig and J. A. Sulpizio: These authors contributed equally to this work

  2. Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

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  1. J. A. Sulpizio

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  1. M. Honig
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Correspondence to J. A. Sulpizio.

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Honig, M., Sulpizio, J., Drori, J. et al. Local electrostatic imaging of striped domain order in LaAlO3/SrTiO3. Nature Mater 12, 1112–1118 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3810

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