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Cooperative elastic fluctuations provide tuning of the metal–insulator transition

Nature volume 576, pages 429–432 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metal-to-insulator transitions1 driven by strong electronic correlations occur frequently in condensed matter systems, and are associated with remarkable collective phenomena in solids, including superconductivity and magnetism. Tuning and control of the transition holds the promise of low-power, ultrafast electronics2, but the relative roles of doping, chemistry, elastic strain and other applied fields have made systematic understanding of such transitions difficult. Here we show that existing data3,4,5 on the tuning of metal-to-insulator transitions in perovskite transition-metal oxides through ionic size effects provides evidence of large systematic effects on the phase transition owing to dynamical fluctuations of the elastic strain, which have usually been neglected6. We illustrate this using a simple yet quantitative statistical mechanical calculation in a model that incorporates cooperative lattice distortions coupled to the electronic degrees of freedom. We reproduce the observed dependence of the transition temperature on the cation radius in the well studied manganite7 and nickelate8 materials. Because elastic couplings are generally strong, we anticipate that these conclusions will generalize to all metal-to-insulator transitions that couple to a change in lattice symmetry.

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Fig. 1: Perovskite lattices.
Fig. 2: Lattice distortions and strain responses.
Fig. 3: Effective elastic energy.
Fig. 4: Comparison to experiments.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge discussions with G. Lonzarich, H. Park and F. Ballar-Trigueros. Work at Argonne National Laboratory is supported by the US Department of Energy, Materials Science Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under contract number DE-AC02-06CH11357. G.G.G.-V. acknowledges support from the Vice-rectory for Research (project number 816-B7-601), and the Office of International Affairs at the University of Costa Rica, the Royal Society International Exchanges programme (grant number IES\R3\170025), Churchill College (University of Cambridge). G.G.G.-V. thanks the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge (where part of this work was done) for hospitality. R.T.B. acknowledges support from the Yale Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship and Homerton College (University of Cambridge).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigación en Ciencia e Ingeniería de Materiales (CICIMA), Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    G. G. Guzmán-Verri

  2. Escuela de Física, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    G. G. Guzmán-Verri

  3. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    G. G. Guzmán-Verri & P. B. Littlewood

  4. Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    R. T. Brierley

  5. James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    P. B. Littlewood

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  1. G. G. Guzmán-Verri
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  3. P. B. Littlewood
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Contributions

P.B.L. conceived the study. G.G.G.-V. and R.T.B. performed the calculations. All authors constructed the model, wrote the manuscript, discussed the results and implications at all stages.

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Correspondence to G. G. Guzmán-Verri or P. B. Littlewood.

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R.T.B. is currently an editor at Nature Communications.

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Peer review information Nature thanks Mona Berciu, Paolo Radaelli and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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This file contains Supplementary Notes 1–3, including Supplementary Figures 1, 2 and Supplementary References.

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Guzmán-Verri, G.G., Brierley, R.T. & Littlewood, P.B. Cooperative elastic fluctuations provide tuning of the metal–insulator transition. Nature 576, 429–432 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1824-9

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