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Length scales of interfacial coupling between metal and insulator phases in oxides

Nature Materials volume 19, pages 1182–1187 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Controlling phase transitions in transition metal oxides remains a central feature of both technological and fundamental scientific relevance. A well-known example is the metal–insulator transition, which has been shown to be highly controllable. However, the length scale over which these phases can be established is not yet well understood. To gain insight into this issue, we atomically engineered an artificially phase-separated system through fabricating epitaxial superlattices that consist of SmNiO3 and NdNiO3, two materials that undergo a metal-to-insulator transition at different temperatures. We demonstrate that the length scale of the interfacial coupling between metal and insulator phases is determined by balancing the energy cost of the boundary between a metal and an insulator and the bulk phase energies. Notably, we show that the length scale of this effect exceeds that of the physical coupling of structural motifs, which introduces a new framework for interface-engineering properties at temperatures against the bulk energetics.

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Fig. 1: Detailed characterization of the ((SmNiO3)m/(NdNiO3)m)L superlattices.
Fig. 2: Transport measurements.
Fig. 3: DFT + U and STEM structural analyses.
Fig. 4: Experimental TMI versus wavelength and output of the Landau model.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The computer codes and algorithm used to generate the results reported in the Article are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. Strand and M. Zingl for fruitful discussions and acknowledge M. Lopes and S. Muller for their invaluable technical support. This work was partly supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through Division II. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 319286 Q-MAC). The authors acknowledge access to the electron microscopy facilities at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The Flatiron Institute is a division of the Simons Foundation. P.G., Y.Z. and A.M. acknowledge support from ULiège (ARC project AIMED), F.R.S.-FNRS Belgium (FRIA grant No 1.E.122.18 and PDR PROMOSPAN grant no. T.0107.20) and M-ERA.NET project SIOX, as well as access to computational resources provided by the Consortium des Equipements de Calcul Intensif (CECI), funded by the Belgian F.R.S.-FNRS under grant no. 2.5020.11 and the Tier-1 supercomputer of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles funded by the Walloon Region of Belgium under grant no. 1117545. M.G. acknowledges support by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant no. PP00P2_170564.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Claribel Domínguez, Bernat Mundet, Jennifer Fowlie, Adrien Waelchli, Sara Catalano, Antoine Georges & Jean-Marc Triscone

  2. Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Alexandru B. Georgescu, Antoine Georges & Andrew J. Millis

  3. Electron Spectrometry and Microscopy Laboratory (LSME), Institute of Physics (IPHYS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Bernat Mundet & Duncan T. L. Alexander

  4. Theoretical Materials Physics, CESAM, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Yajun Zhang, Alain Mercy & Philippe Ghosez

  5. Collège de France, Paris, France

    Antoine Georges

  6. Centre de Physique Théorique (CPHT), CNRS, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Paris, France

    Antoine Georges

  7. Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Andrew J. Millis

  8. Physik-Institut, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marta Gibert

Authors
  1. Claribel Domínguez
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Contributions

M.G. and J.-M.T. conceived the project. C.D. fabricated the superlattices and carried out the transport measurements with A.W. The Landau model was developed by A.B.G., A.G. and A.J.M. Transmission electron microscopy was performed and analysed by B.M. and D.T.L.A. The first-principles calculations were carried out by Y.Z., A.M. and P.G. C.D. and J.F. wrote the manuscript with input from all the authors. All the authors contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the experimental results.

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Correspondence to Claribel Domínguez.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–8, discussion sections 1–8, Table 1 and reference list.

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Domínguez, C., Georgescu, A.B., Mundet, B. et al. Length scales of interfacial coupling between metal and insulator phases in oxides. Nat. Mater. 19, 1182–1187 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0757-x

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