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Creating emergent phenomena in oxide superlattices

Nature Reviews Materials volume 4, pages 257–268 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Complex oxides are record holder materials for many phenomena, including ferroelectricity, piezoelectricity, superconductivity and multiferroicity. Complex oxides often have competing ground states with energies slightly higher than that of the true ground state. This competition is fortuitous because thermodynamic variables (for example, temperature, electric field, magnetic field, stress and chemical potentials) can access these metastable phases that are usually hidden but emerge as the energetic landscape is reshaped by adjusting the thermodynamic variables. Epitaxial superlattices are a platform for imposing thermodynamic boundary conditions to unleash the properties of hidden phases by altering the delicate balance between competing spin, charge, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom. Additionally, a feature of complex oxides with large responses (large property coefficients) is the coexistence of phases on the nanoscale. New phases can emerge at the heterointerfaces of oxide superlattices, and X-ray, electron, neutron and proximal probes as well as ab initio theoretical studies can provide insights into these emergent phenomena.

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Fig. 1: A comparison of the energy scales of various thermodynamic constraints in oxide superlattices.
Fig. 2: A schematic of the approaches used in vacuum thin-film deposition techniques to create epitaxial heterostructures.
Fig. 3: An atomic-level composite comprising a ferrimagnet and a geometric ferroelectric.
Fig. 4: A design methodology for creating higher-temperature magnetoelectric multiferroics in oxide superlattices.
Fig. 5: Hierarchical structures in oxide superlattices.
Fig. 6: Epitaxial constraints alter the crystal structure and the microstructure of BiFeO3 to access hidden ground states, including an isostructural morphotropic phase transition.

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Acknowledgements

For more than two decades, the authors have been extremely fortunate to have the pleasure to collaborate with outstanding colleagues within their home institutions and around the world. The authors are grateful to their past and current students and postdocs, who have made their learning experience much richer. The authors are also fortunate to have been funded from a variety of sources, enabling complementary aspects of their research activity, particularly the US National Science Foundation (NSF)-Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC), US Department of Energy, US Army Research Office (ARO)-Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), US Office of Naval Research (ONR)-MURI, Semiconductor Research Corporation-Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (SRC-WIN), Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP) and the NSF-Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The two examples discussed in detail in this Review were primarily supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under award no. DE-SC0002334 (for the work at Cornell University) and by the ARO under grant W911NF-16-1-0315 and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative (for the work at University of California, Berkeley).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science & Engineering and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Ramamoorthy Ramesh

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Darrell G. Schlom

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  1. Ramamoorthy Ramesh
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  2. Darrell G. Schlom
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This Review was conceived, discussed and written by R.R. and D.G.S.

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Correspondence to Ramamoorthy Ramesh or Darrell G. Schlom.

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Ramesh, R., Schlom, D.G. Creating emergent phenomena in oxide superlattices. Nat Rev Mater 4, 257–268 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-019-0095-2

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