Two-dimensional electron system at the magnetically tunable EuO/SrTiO${}_3$ interface

Abstract

We create a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) at the interface between EuO, a ferromagnetic insulator, and SrTiO3, a transparent non-magnetic insulator considered the bedrock of oxide-based electronics. This is achieved by a controlled in-situ redox reaction between pure metallic Eu deposited at room temperature on the surface of SrTiO3, an innovative bottom-up approach that can be easily generalized to other functional oxides and scaled to applications. Additionally, we find that the resulting EuO capping layer can be tuned from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic, depending on the layer thickness. These results demonstrate that the simple, novel technique of creating 2DESs in oxides by deposition of elementary reducing agents [T. C. Rödel et al., Adv. Mater. 28, 1976 (2016)] can be extended to simultaneously produce an active, e.g. magnetic, capping layer enabling the realization and control of additional functionalities in such oxide-based 2DESs.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Magnetic effects at the interface between nonmagnetic oxides
• Electric Field Control of the LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ Interface Ground State
• Highly efficient and tuneable spin-to-charge conversion through Rashba coupling at oxide interfaces
• Observation of Inverse Edelstein Effect in Rashba-Split 2DEG between SrTiO3 and LaAlO3 at Room Temperature
• Epitaxial and layer-by-layer growth of EuO thin films on yttria-stabilized cubic zirconia (001) using MBE distillation
• Orientational tuning of the Fermi sea of confined electrons at the SrTiO3 (110) and (111) surfaces
• Engineering two-dimensional electron gases at the (001) and (101) surfaces of TiO2 anatase using light