Crossover of conduction mechanism in Sr2IrO4 epitaxial thin films

Abstract

High quality epitaxial Sr2IrO4 thin films with various thicknesses (9-300 nm) have been grown on SrTiO3 (001) substrates, and their electric transport properties have been investigated. All samples showed the expected insulating behavior with a strong resistivity dependence on film thickness, that can be as large as three orders of magnitude at low temperature. A close examination of the transport data revealed interesting crossover behaviors for the conduction mechanism upon variation of thickness and temperature. While Mott variable range hopping (VRH) dominated the transport for films thinner than 85 nm, high temperature thermal activation behavior was observed for films with large thickness, which was followed by a crossover from Mott to Efros-Shklovskii (ES) VRH in the low temperature range. This low temperature crossover from Mott to ES VRH indicates the presence of a Coulomb gap (~3 meV). Our results demonstrate the competing and tunable conduction in Sr2IrO4 thin films, which in turn would be helpful for understanding the insulating nature related to strong spin-orbit-coupling of the 5d iridates.

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• Revealing Controllable Anisotropic Magnetoresistance in Spin Orbit Coupled Antiferromagnet Sr2IrO4
• The Jeff=1/2 antiferromagnet Sr2IrO4: A golden avenue toward new physics and functions
• Novel spin-orbit coupling driven emergent states in iridate-based heterostructures
• Dual gate control of bulk transport and magnetism in the spin-orbit insulator Sr2IrO4
• Giant reversible nanoscale piezoresistance at room temperature in Sr2IrO4 thin films
• Electrically Tunable Band Gap in Antiferromagnetic Mott Insulator Sr2IrO4
• Ambipolar Transport and Magneto-resistance Crossover in a Mott Insulator, Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$
• Light-induced insulator-metal transition in Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$ reveals the nature of the insulating ground state
• Hopping Transport in SrTiO3/Nd1-xTiO3/SrTiO3 Heterostructures
• Epitaxial stabilization of Sr3Ir2O7 thin films
• Electronic and optical properties of La-doped Sr${}_3$Ir${}_2$O${}_7$ epitaxial thin-films
• Tuning the structural, electronic and magneto-transport properties of spin-orbit Mott insulator Sr2IrO4
• Cryogenic spin Peltier effect detected by a RuO${}_2$-AlO${}_x$ on-chip microthermometer
• Possibility of an unconventional spin state of Ir${}^{4+}$ in Ba${}_{21}$Ir${}_9$O${}_{43}$ single crystal