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Designing and controlling the properties of transition metal oxide quantum materials

Nature Materials volume 20, pages 1462–1468 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

This Perspective addresses the design, creation, characterization and control of synthetic quantum materials with strong electronic correlations. We show how emerging synergies between theoretical/computational approaches and materials design/experimental probes are driving recent advances in the discovery, understanding and control of new electronic behaviour in materials systems with interesting and potentially technologically important properties. The focus here is on transition metal oxides, where electronic correlations lead to a myriad of functional properties including superconductivity, magnetism, Mott transitions, multiferroicity and emergent behaviour at picoscale-designed interfaces. Current opportunities and challenges are also addressed, including possible new discoveries of non-equilibrium phenomena and optical control of correlated quantum phases of transition metal oxides.

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Fig. 1: Interplay of theory and experiment.
Fig. 2: Metal–insulator transition in nickelates.
Fig. 3: Non-equilibrium superconductivity in YBa2Cu3O6 + x and in K3C60.

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Acknowledgements

C.A. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award DE-SC0019211. S.I.-B. acknowledges support from the US Department of Defense Army Research Office under award ARO W911NF-19-1-0371 and the US National Science Foundation under awards NSF DMR-1838463 and NSF ACI-1339804. A.J.M. acknowledges support from NSF DMR-1420634, the Columbia University Center for Precision Assembly of Superstratic and Superatomic Solids. J.-M.T. acknowledges J. Fowlie for her help with the nickelate section, X. Ravinet for designing Fig. 1 and the Swiss National Science Foundation for support through Division II (project 200020_179155). A.C., A.G. and J.-M.T. acknowledge the support of the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 319286 Q-MAC. The Flatiron Institute (A.G., A.J.M.) is a division of the Simons Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Charles Ahn & Sohrab Ismail-Beigi

  2. Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany

    Andrea Cavalleri

  3. Collège de France, Paris, France

    Antoine Georges

  4. CCQ-Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Antoine Georges & Andrew J. Millis

  5. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Andrew J. Millis

  6. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Jean-Marc Triscone

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Correspondence to Sohrab Ismail-Beigi.

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Ahn, C., Cavalleri, A., Georges, A. et al. Designing and controlling the properties of transition metal oxide quantum materials. Nat. Mater. 20, 1462–1468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-00989-2

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