Growth of epitaxial NdNiO3 and integration with Si(100)

Abstract

We have grown epitaxial NdNiO3 films on Si(100) substrate under ambient oxygen pressure using a pulsed-laser deposition method. The integration of NdNiO3 with Si(100) was accomplished by lattice-matching epitaxy of MgO and SrTiO3 and domain matching epitaxy of TiN on Si(100). During domain matching epitaxy, four lattice constants of TiN match with three of silicon across the TiN/Si(100) interface. High-quality epitaxial NdNiO3 film on SrTiO3/MgO/TiN/Si(100) showed a very sharp metal–insulator (MI) phase transition at 200 K. Observed MI transition in epitaxial NdNiO3 is much sharper than that usually observed in bulk and polycrystalline films with more than four orders of magnitude change in resistivity. This MI transition is understood to arise because of the opening of charge transfer gap between Ni3+(3d) and O2−(2p) band.