Local probing of superconductivity at oxide interfaces with atomic force microscopy

Abstract

Superconductivity in strontium titanate has remained enigmatic for more than 50 years. The LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ (LAO/STO) heterointerface enables systematic dimensional confinement, from a two-dimensional electron gas to quasi-one-dimensional nanostructures, providing access to this quantum state. Transport measurements in patterned devices reveal puzzling phenomena, including width-independent critical currents and anomalous pairing suggestive of one-dimensional behavior, but direct local probes of the patterned interface and its superconducting response have been lacking. Here we use ultralow-temperature non-contact atomic force microscopy, dissipation spectroscopy, and Kelvin probe force microscopy to locally probe signatures of superconductivity in patterned LAO/STO devices. Spatially resolved energy-dissipation measurements reveal superconducting signatures, with features confined in some devices to edge channels approximately 200 nm wide. Dissipation spectra exhibit a characteristic nonlinear bias dependence that provides a local diagnostic of superconductivity, consistent with the intermediate carrier-density regime near the superconducting dome, and persisting up to the critical field. These results establish atomic force microscopy as a local probe of superconductivity in patterned LAO/STO structures and provide a route to addressing longstanding questions about quantum confinement and transport anomalies in correlated oxide nanostructures.