Polar catastrophe in ultra-thin limit: A case of rare-earth perovskite LaNiO3

Abstract

We address the fundamental issue of growth of perovskite ultra-thin films under the condition of a strong polar mismatch at the heterointerface exemplified by the growth of a correlated metal LaNiO${}_3$ on the band insulator SrTiO${}_3$ along the pseudo cubic [111] direction. While in general the metallic LaNiO${}_3$ film can effectively screen this polarity mismatch, we establish that in the ultra-thin limit, films are insulating in nature and require additional chemical and structural reconstruction to compensate for such mismatch. A combination of in-situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction recorded during the growth, X-ray diffraction, and synchrotron based resonant X-ray spectroscopy reveal the formation of a chemical phase La${}_2$Ni${}_2$O${}_5$ (Ni${}^{2+}$) for a few unit-cell thick films. First-principles layer-resolved calculations of the potential energy across the nominal LaNiO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ interface confirm that the oxygen vacancies can efficiently reduce the electric field at the interface.

References in corpus (9)

• High Mobility in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Heterostructures: Origin, Dimensionality and Perspectives
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• Orientational tuning of the Fermi sea of confined electrons at the SrTiO3 (110) and (111) surfaces
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• Design of $n$- and $p$-type oxide thermoelectrics in LaNiO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3(001)$ superlattices exploiting interface polarity
• Geometrical lattice engineering of complex oxide heterostructures: a designer approach to emergent quantum states
• Epitaxial Growth of (1 1 1)-Oriented Spinel CoCr${}_2$O${}_4$/Al${}_2$O${}_3$ Heterostructures
• Structural investigation of (111) oriented (BiFeO3)(1-x)Λ/(LaFeO3)xΛ superlattices by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy