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Metal-Insulator Transition of LaNiO3 Films in LaNiO3/SrIrO3 Heterostructures.

Yao LiJian ZhouDi Wu
Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces (2019)
LaNiO3/SrIrO3 (LNO/SIO) heterostructures were deposited epitaxially on (001) SrTiO3 substrates. Transport characteristics of these LNO/SIO heterostructures were investigated as functions of LNO and SIO thickness. It has been observed that interfacing with SIO induces a metal-insulator transition at about 20 K in a 10 unit cell thick LNO film, which is otherwise metallic down to 2 K. In addition, this metal-insulator transition is irrelevant to the thickness of SIO, indicative of an interfacial effect. X-ray absorption measurements reveal an electron transfer from LNO to SIO across the interface. Meanwhile, the observation of a spin-glass-like state manifests the importance of spin-dependent scattering. The metal-insulator transition is discussed in terms of Kondo effect by random scattering from impurity spins associated with the interfacial electron transfer and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction due to strong spin-orbit coupling inherent in 5d perovskite SIO.
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