2024/06/18 by Greta Segantini, Segantini, Greta, Chih‐Ying Hsu +15 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · #Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Semiconductor materials and devices
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.12743
openalex publication_date 2024/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The epitaxial growth of complex oxides enables the production of high-quality films, yet substrate choice is restricted to certain symmetry and lattice parameters, thereby limiting the technological applications of epitaxial oxides. In comparison, the development of free-standing oxide membranes gives opportunities to create novel heterostructures by non-epitaxial stacking of membranes, opening new possibilities for materials design. Here, we introduce a method for writing, with atomic precision, ionically bonded crystalline material across the gap between an oxide membrane and a carrier substrate. The process involves a thermal pre-treatment, followed by localized exposure to the raster scan of a scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) beam. STEM imaging and electron energy-loss spectroscopy show that we achieve atomically sharp interface reconstructions between a 30 nm-thick SrTiO3 membrane and a niobium-doped SrTiO3(001)-oriented carrier substrate. These findings indicate new strategies for fabricating synthetic heterostructures with novel structural and electronic properties.