Strain-dependent Insulating State and Kondo Effect in Epitaxial SrIrO${}_3$ Films

Abstract

The large spin-orbit coupling in iridium oxides plays a significant role in driving novel physical behaviors, including emergent phenomena in the films and heterostructures of perovskite and Ruddlesden-Popper iridates. In this work, we study the role of epitaxial strain on the electronic behavior of thin SrIrO${}_3$ films. We find that compressive epitaxial strain leads to metallic transport behavior, but a slight tensile strain shows gapped behavior. Temperature-dependent resistivity measurements are used to examine different behaviors in films as a function of strain. We find Kondo contributions to the resistivity, with stronger effects in films that are thinner and under less compressive epitaxial strain. These results show the potential to tune SrIrO${}_3$ into Kondo insulating states and open possibilities for a quantum critical point that can be controlled with strain in epitaxial films.

arXiv comment13 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (26)

• Correlated quantum phenomena in the strong spin-orbit regime
• Spin-Orbit Physics Giving Rise to Novel Phases in Correlated Systems: Iridates and Related Materials
• Twisted Hubbard Model for Sr2IrO4: Magnetism and Possible High Temperature Superconductivity
• Transport Coefficients of the Anderson Model via the Numerical Renormalization Group
• Strain controlled oxygen vacancy formation and ordering in CaMnO${}_3$
• Interplay of Spin-Orbit Interactions, Dimensionality, and Octahedral Rotations in Semimetallic SrIrO${}_3$
• The Challenge of Spin-Orbit-Tuned Ground States in Iridates
• Electrolyte gate-controlled Kondo effect in SrTiO3
• Metal insulator transitions in perovskite SrIrO3 thin films
• Interplay between spin-orbit coupling and Hubbard interaction in SrIrO3 and related Pbnm perovskites
• Spin-orbit semimetal SrIrO${}_3$ in the two-dimensional limit
• Non-Fermi-liquid behavior in nearly ferromagnetic metallic SrIrO3 single crystals
• Two-dimensional $J_{\mathrm{eff}}$ = 1/2 antiferromagnetic insulator unraveled from interlayer exchange coupling in artificial perovskite iridate superlattices
• Slater Insulator in Iridate Perovskites with Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Probing Emergent Surface and Interfacial Properties in Complex Oxides via in situ X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy
• Synthesis and electronic properties of Ruddlesden-Popper strontium iridate epitaxial thin films stabilized by control of growth kinetics
• The Jeff=1/2 antiferromagnet Sr2IrO4: A golden avenue toward new physics and functions
• Possible quantum paramagnetism in compressed Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$
• Electronic Structure and Magnetic Properties of Iridate Superlattice SrIrO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$
• Strain-modulated Slater-Mott crossover of pseudospin-half square-lattice in (SrIrO3)1/ (SrTiO3)1 superlattices
• Advances in Complex Oxide Quantum Materials Through New Approaches to Molecular Beam Epitaxy
• Low temperature ferromagnetism in perovskite SrIrO${}_3$ films
• Magnetic properties of bilayer Sr${}_3$Ir${}_2$O${}_7$: role of epitaxial strain and oxygen vacancies
• From Weak Antilocalization to Kondo Scattering in a Magnetic Complex Oxide Interface
• Simultaneous Metal-Insulator and Antiferromagnetic Transitions in Orthorhombic Perovskite Iridate Sr0.94Ir0.78O2.68 Single Crystals
• Reconciling monolayer and bilayer $J_{\mathrm{eff}}=1/2$ square lattices in hybrid oxide superlattice