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Martina Zupancic

Publications and source records attributed to Martina Zupancic.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Enabling two-dimensional electron gas with high room-temperature electron mobility exceeding 100 cm$^2$/Vs at a perovskite oxide interface

In perovskite oxide heterostructures, bulk functional properties coexist with emergent physical phenomena at epitaxial interfaces. Notably, charge transfer at the interface between two insulating oxide layers can lead to the formation of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) with possible applications in, e.g., high-electronmobility transistors and ferroelectric field-effect transistors. So far, the realization of oxide 2DEGs is, however, largely limited to the interface between the single-crystal substrate and epitaxial film, preventing their deliberate placement inside a larger device architecture. Additionally, the substrate-limited quality of perovskite oxide interfaces hampers room-temperature 2DEG performance due to notoriously low electron mobility. In this work, we demonstrate the controlled creation of an interfacial 2DEG at the epitaxial interface between perovskite oxides BaSnO$_3$ and LaInO$_3$ with enhanced room-temperature electron mobilities up to 119 cm$^2$/Vs - the highest room-temperature value reported so far for a perovskite oxide 2DEG. Using a combination of state-of-the-art deposition modes during oxide molecular beam epitaxy, our approach opens up another degree of freedom in optimization and $in$-$situ$ control of the interface between two epitaxial oxide layers away from the substrate interface. We thus expect our approach to apply to the general class of perovskite oxide 2DEG systems and to enable their improved compatibility with novel device concepts and integration across materials platforms.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Adsorption-controlled plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy of LaInO3 on DyScO3(110): Growth window, strain relaxation, and domain pattern

We report the growth of epitaxial LaInO3 on DyScO3(110) substrates by adsorption-controlled plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE). The adsorption-controlled growth was monitored using line-of-sight quadrupole mass spectrometry. In a thermodynamics of MBE (TOMBE) diagram, the experimental growth window was found to be significantly narrower than the predicted one. We found the critical thickness for strain relaxation of the LaInO3 layer (lattice mismatch $\approx$ -4$\%$) to be of 1 nm using in-situ RHEED analysis. Substrate and film possess an orthorhombic crystal structure which can be approximated by a pseudo-cubic lattice. X-ray-diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the pseudo-cube-on-pseudo-cube epitaxial relationship ofthe LaInO3 films to the DyScO3 substrates. This relation was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which further resolved the presence of rotational orthorhombic domains - the majority of which have coinciding c-axis with that of the substrate. Raman spectroscopy further confirmed the presence of a LaInO3 layer. Our findings open up the possibility for 2-dimensional electron gases at the MBE-grown heterointerface with BaSnO3.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

A consistent picture of excitations in cubic BaSnO$_{3}$ revealed by combining theory and experiment

Among the transparent conducting oxides, the perovskite barium stannate is most promising for various electronic applications due to its outstanding carrier mobility achieved at room temperature. However, most of its important characteristics, such as band gaps, effective masses, and absorption edge, remain controversial. Here, we provide a fully consistent picture by combining state-of-the-art {\it ab initio} methodology with forefront electron energy-loss spectroscopy and optical absorption measurements. Valence electron energy-loss spectra, featuring signals originating from band gap transitions, are acquired on defect-free sample regions of a BaSnO$_{3}$ single crystal. These high-energy-resolution measurements are able to capture also very weak excitations below the optical gap, attributed to indirect transitions. By temperature-dependent optical absorption measurements, we assess band-gap renormalization effects induced by electron-phonon coupling. Overall, we find for the effective electronic mass, the direct and the indirect gap, the optical gap, as well as the absorption onsets and spectra, excellent agreement between both experimental techniques and the theoretical many-body results, supporting also the picture of a phonon-mediated mechanism where indirect transitions are activated by phonon-induced symmetry lowering. This work demonstrates a fruitful connection between different high-level theoretical and experimental methods for exploring the characteristics of advanced materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

The role of the interface in controlling the epitaxial relationship between orthorhombic $\text{LaInO}_\text{3}$ and cubic $\text{BaSnO}_\text{3}$

Epitaxial perovskite oxide interfaces with different symmetry of the epitaxial layers have attracted considerable attention due to the emergence of novel behaviors and phenomena. In this paper, we show by aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy that orthorhombic $\text{LaInO}_\text{3}$ films grow in form of three different types of domains on the cubic $\text{BaSnO}_\text{3}$ pseudosubstrate. Quantitative evaluation of our TEM data shows that $c_{pc}$-oriented and $a_{pc}/b_{pc}$-oriented domains are present with similar probability. While continuum elasticity theory suggests that $c_{pc}$-oriented domains should exhibit a significantly higher strain energy density than $a_{pc}/b_{pc}$-oriented domains, density functional calculations confirm that $c_{pc}$- and $a_{pc}$-oriented domains on $\text{BaSnO}_\text{3}$ have similar energies.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗