2015/01/01 by Yonathan Anahory, Lior Embon, Chang Jian Li +24
Materials Science · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Antiferromagnetism #Autism #Autism Spectrum Disorder Research #Autism spectrum disorder #Condensed matter physics #Developmental psychology #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Ferromagnetism #Intervention (counseling) #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Magnetic field #Magnetic moment #Magnetization #Materials science #Nanoscopic scale #Nanotechnology #Physics #Psychiatry #Psychology #Spintronics #Superparamagnetism #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1038/ncomms12566
published in Nature Communications 7(1), 12566 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2015/01/01 · arxiv created 2015/09/07 · arxiv updated 2016/08/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Atomically sharp oxide heterostructures exhibit a range of novel physical phenomena that are absent in the parent compounds. A prominent example is the appearance of highly conducting and superconducting states at the interface between LaAlO3 and SrTiO3. Here we report an emergent phenomenon at the LaMnO3/SrTiO3 interface where an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator abruptly transforms into a nanoscale inhomogeneous magnetic state. Upon increasing the thickness of LaMnO3, our scanning nanoSQUID-on-tip microscopy shows spontaneous formation of isolated magnetic nanoislands, which display thermally activated moment reversals in response to an in-plane magnetic field. The observed superparamagnetic state manifests the emergence of thermodynamic electronic phase separation in which metallic ferromagnetic islands nucleate in an insulating antiferromagnetic matrix. We derive a model that captures the sharp onset and the thickness dependence of the magnetization. Our model suggests that a nearby superparamagnetic-ferromagnetic transition can be gate tuned, holding potential for applications in magnetic storage and spintronics.