Quantum confinement in perovskite oxide heterostructures: tight binding instead of nearly free electron picture

Abstract

Most recently, orbital-selective quantum well states of $d$ electrons have been experimentally observed in SrVO${}_3$ ultrathin films [K. Yoshimatsu et. al., Science 333, 319 (2011)] and SrTiO${}_3$ surfaces [A. F. Santander-Syro et. al., Nature 469, 189 (2011)]. Hitherto, one tries to explain these experiments by a nearly free electron (NFE) model, an approach widely used for delocalized electrons in semiconductor heterostructures and simple metal films. We show that a tight binding (TB) model is more suitable for describing heterostructures with more localized $d$ electrons. In this paper, we construct from first principles simple TB models for perovskite oxide heterostructures and surfaces. We show that the TB model provides a simple intuitive physical picture and yields, already with only two parameters, quantitatively much more reliable results, consistent with experiment.

References in corpus (9)

• Electric Field Control of the LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ Interface Ground State
• Theory of spin-orbit coupling at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces and SrTiO3 surfaces
• Theory of t2g electron-gas Rashba interactions
• Origin of Metallic States at Heterointerface between Band Insulators LaAlO${}_3$ and SrTiO${}_3$
• Momentum-resolved spectral functions of SrVO${}_3$ calculated by LDA+DMFT
• Quantum many-body interactions in digital oxide superlattices
• Hard x-ray photoemission and density functional theory study of the internal electric field in SrTiO3/LaAlO3 oxide heterostructures
• Toward an artificial Mott insulator: Correlations in confined, high-density electron liquids in SrTiO3
• Charge density distribution and optical response of the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Anisotropic two-dimensional electron gas at SrTiO3(110) protected by its native overlayer
• Band alignment and charge transfer in complex oxide interfaces
• Quantization of Hall Resistance at the Metallic Interface between an Oxide Insulator and SrTiO${}_3$
• Mixed Dimensionality of Confined Conducting Electrons in the Surface Region of SrTiO${}_3$
• Electronics with correlated oxides: SrVO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ as a Mott transistor
• Tuning the work function in transition metal oxides and their heterostructures
• Electron-Phonon Coupling and Electron-Phonon Scattering in SrVO${}_3$
• Origin of the anomalous mass renormalization in metallic quantum well states of correlated oxide SrVO${}_3$
• Giant switchable Rashba effect in oxide heterostructures
• Metal-insulator transition in CaVO${}_3$ thin films: interplay between epitaxial strain, dimensional confinement, and surface effects
• Boosting the power factor with resonant states: a model study
• Influence of the ferroelectric quantum critical point on SrTiO${}_3$ interfaces
• Subband structure of two-dimensional electron gases in SrTiO3
• Strain Engineering of the Intrinsic Spin Hall Conductivity in a SrTiO${}_3$ Quantum Well
• Temperature-Dependent Band Structure of SrTiO${}_3$ Interfaces
• Charge transfer and metallicity in LaNiO${}_3$/LaMnO${}_3$ superlattices
• Hund's metallicity enhanced by van Hove singularity in cubic perovskite systems