2014/03/31 by S. Middey, P. Rivero, Pablo Rivero +9 · 3 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep06819
published as Scientific Reports, 4, 6819 (2014)
openalex publication_date 2014/10/29 · arxiv created 2014/12/22 · arxiv updated 2014/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We address the fundamental issue of growth of perovskite ultra-thin films under the condition of a strong polar mismatch at the heterointerface exemplified by the growth of a correlated metal LaNiO3 on the band insulator SrTiO3 along the pseudo cubic [111] direction. While in general the metallic LaNiO3 film can effectively screen this polarity mismatch, we establish that in the ultra-thin limit, films are insulating in nature and require additional chemical and structural reconstruction to compensate for such mismatch. A combination of in-situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction recorded during the growth, X-ray diffraction, and synchrotron based resonant X-ray spectroscopy reveal the formation of a chemical phase La2Ni2O5 (Ni(2+)) for a few unit-cell thick films. First-principles layer-resolved calculations of the potential energy across the nominal LaNiO3/SrTiO3 interface confirm that the oxygen vacancies can efficiently reduce the electric field at the interface.