Abstract
Artificial heterostructures composed of dissimilar transition metal oxides provide unprecedented opportunities to create remarkable physical phenomena. Here, we report a means to deliberately control the orbital polarization in LaNiO3 (LNO) through interfacing with SrCuO2 (SCO), which has an infinite-layer structure for CuO2. Dimensional control of SCO results in a planar-type (P–SCO) to chain-type (C–SCO) structure transition depending on the SCO thickness. This transition is exploited to induce either a NiO5 pyramidal or a NiO6 octahedral structure at the SCO/LNO interface. Consequently, a large change in the Ni d orbital occupation up to ~30% is achieved in P–SCO/LNO superlattices, whereas the Ni eg orbital splitting is negligible in C–SCO/LNO superlattices. The engineered oxygen coordination triggers a metal-to-insulator transition in SCO/LNO superlattices. Our results demonstrate that interfacial oxygen coordination engineering provides an effective means to manipulate the orbital configuration and associated physical properties, paving a pathway towards the advancement of oxide electronics.
Highlights
Artificial heterostructures composed of dissimilar transition metal oxides provide unprecedented opportunities to create remarkable physical phenomena
The correlated d-orbital plays a central role in creating collective phenomena in transition metal oxides, since the s-electrons of transition metals are transferred to oxygen ions, and the remaining d-electrons determine the delicate interplay between spin, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom[1]
Identifying ways to deliberately control the orbital degree of freedom in correlated oxides is highly desirable to discover electronic and magnetic phenomena that are useful for developing oxide electronic and spintronic devices
Summary
Artificial heterostructures composed of dissimilar transition metal oxides provide unprecedented opportunities to create remarkable physical phenomena. Dimensional control of SCO results in a planar-type (P–SCO) to chain-type (C–SCO) structure transition depending on the SCO thickness. This transition is exploited to induce either a NiO5 pyramidal or a NiO6 octahedral structure at the SCO/LNO interface. Our results demonstrate that interfacial oxygen coordination engineering provides an effective means to manipulate the orbital configuration and associated physical properties, paving a pathway towards the advancement of oxide electronics. The correlated d-orbital plays a central role in creating collective phenomena in transition metal oxides, since the s-electrons of transition metals are transferred to oxygen ions, and the remaining d-electrons determine the delicate interplay between spin, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom[1]. The remarkable Mott metal-insulator transition often found in correlated oxides can be engineered by tailoring the orbital occupancy[7]. A recent theoretical study proposed that the planar x2-y2 orbital order could be realized by spatially confining
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