Direct Imaging of Sketched Conductive Nanostructures at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Interface

Abstract

Nanoscale control of the quasi-two-dimensional electron gas at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) interface by a conductive probe tip has triggered the development of a number of electronic devices. While the spatial distribution of the conductance is crucial for such devices, it is challenging to directly visualize the local electrical properties at the buried interface. Here we demonstrate conductivity imaging of sketched nanostructures at the LAO/STO interface by microwave impedance microscopy (MIM) with a lateral resolution on the order of 100 nm. The sheet conductance extracted from the MIM data agrees with the transport measurement. The tip-induced insulator-to-metal transition is observed above a threshold voltage of +4 V. Our work paves the way to study emergent phenomena at oxide interfaces by probing nanoscale conductance distribution.

arXiv comment12 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Magnetic effects at the interface between nonmagnetic oxides
• Direct imaging of the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface
• Coexistence of Magnetic Order and Two-dimensional Superconductivity at LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ Interfaces
• Mapping the Spatial Distribution of Charge Carriers in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Heterostructures
• Locally enhanced conductivity due to the tetragonal domain structure in LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ heterointerfaces
• "Water-cycle" mechanism for writing and erasing nanostructures at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface
• Local Electrostatic Imaging of Striped Domain Order in LaAlO3/SrTiO3
• Rewritable nanoscale oxide photodetector
• Modeling of a Cantilever-Based Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscope
• Nanoscale Phenomena in Oxide Heterostructures
• Charge writing at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 surface
• Low-energy Structural Dynamics of Ferroelectric Domain Walls in Hexagonal Rare-earth Manganites
• Micrometer-scale ballistic transport of electron pairs in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 nanowires

Cited by in corpus (3)

• High sensitivity variable-temperature infrared nanoscopy of conducting oxide interfaces
• Electronically phase separated nano-network in antiferromagnetic insulating LaMnO3/PrMnO3/CaMnO3 tricolor superlattice
• Observation of a Room Temperature Two-dimensional Ferroelectric Metal