Growth and Interfacial Emergent Properties of Complex Oxide Thin Film Heterostructures

Abstract

Non-trivial/chiral spin textures like skyrmions originate from inversion symmetry breaking. Moreover, inversion symmetry breaking combined with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can lead to a large Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). Electrically, these phenomena can be detected through what is called the topological Hall effect (THE). In artificially layered complex oxide thin film heterostructures composed of ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic layers, this THE appears as an emergent property at the interfaces because it is not intrinsic to the bulk layer of such oxides. Thus these heterostructures provide a playground for the competition among DMI, exchange interaction, and magnetic anisotropy to produce novel non-coplanar spin textures and THE in a designable way due to inversion symmetry breaking at the interfaces. With the advancement in modern fabrication techniques, these properties can be tuned at will by engineering the interfaces of the heterostructures, especially due to crystal structure compatibility of these materials. In this chapter, growth, detection and manipulation of interfacial emergent phenomena in complex oxide heterostructures will be discussed.