Surface Effects on Oxide Heterostructures

Abstract

We report on surface effects on the electronic properties of interfaces in epitaxial LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ heterostructures. Our results are based on first-principles electronic structure calculations for well-relaxed multilayer configurations, terminated by an ultrathin LaAlO${}_3$ surface layer. On varying the thickness of this layer, we find that the interface conduction states are subject to almost rigid band shifts due to a modified Fermi energy. Confirming experimental data, the electronic properties of heterointerfaces therefore can be tuned systematically by alterating the surface-interface distance. We expect that this mechanism is very general and applies to most oxide heterostructures.

10 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (5)

• A Surface Reconstruction with a Fractional Hole: $(\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5})R26.6^{\circ }$ LaAlO${}_3$ (001)
• Intrinsic Doping at YBCO-metal Interfaces: Quantitative Results
• Charge redistribution at YBa2Cu3O7-metal interfaces
• Electronic structure of the Au/benzene-1,4-dithiol/Au transport interface: Effects of chemical bonding
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• Interface energies of (100)_{YSZ} and (111)_{YSZ} epitaxial islands on (0001)_{alpha-Al_2O_3} substrates from first principles
• Geometry dependence of the charge transfer at YBa2Cu3O7-metal interfaces
• Quantitative calculations of charge carrier densities in the depletion layers at YBa2Cu3O7-x interfaces
• Quantum size effects in Pb layers with absorbed Kondo adatoms: Determination of the exchange coupling constant
• Influence of the vacuum interface on the charge distribution in V2O3 thin films