arXiv subjects

Zhiqi Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Zhiqi Liu.

34 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Experimental Progress on the Emergent Infinite-Layer Ni-Based Superconductors

The emergence of the infinite-layer superconducting nickelate thin films marks the Ni age of superconductivity, which has excited a huge surge of studies since the first report in August of 2019. Despite of the tremendous attention drawn from the entire material science community and a large body of theoretical studies, the experimental progress has been relatively slow due to the challenging sample fabrication, which may, in turn, be holding back the fast development of theoretical research. Therefore, a timely and comprehensive review on all the up-to-date experimental progress of the emergent infinite-layer Ni-based superconductors is urgently needed. In this review, we first introduce the history of more than 30-year-long Ni-based superconductivity exploration, then summarize the sample fabrication processes, later present the experimental electrical transport and magnetic properties, and finally come up with several key issues deserving intensive studies. This review is thus expected to be helpful for researchers with diverse research background to readily capture the major progress of this emerging field.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Antiferromagnetism in Ni-Based Superconductors

Due to the lack of any magnetic order down to 1.7 K in the parent bulk compound NdNiO2, the recently discovered 9-15 K superconductivity in the infinite-layer Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2 thin films has provided an exciting playground for unearthing new superconductivity mechanisms. In this letter, we report the successful synthesis of a series of superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2 thin films ranging from 8 to 40 nm. We observe the large exchange bias effect between the superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2 films and a thin ferromagnetic layer, which suggests the existence of the antiferromagnetic order. Furthermore, the existence of the antiferromagnetic order is evidenced by X-ray magnetic linear dichroism measurements. These experimental results are fundamentally critical for the current field.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Epitaxial Integration of a Perpendicularly Magnetized Ferrimagnetic Metal on a Ferroelectric oxide for Electric-Field Control

Ferrimagnets, which contain the advantages of both ferromagnets (detectable moments) and antiferromagnets (ultrafast spin dynamics), have recently attracted great attention. Here we report the optimization of epitaxial growth of a tetragonal perpendicularly magnetized ferrimagnet Mn2Ga on MgO. Electrical transport, magnetic properties and the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) were systematically studied. Furthermore, we successfully integrated high-quality epitaxial ferrimagnetic Mn2Ga thin films onto ferroelectric PMN-PT single crystals with a MgO buffer layer. It was found that the AHE of such a ferrimagnet can be effectively modulated by a small electric field over a large temperature range in a nonvolatile manner. This work thus demonstrates the great potential of ferrimagnets for developing high-density and low-power spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Electric-Field-Controlled Antiferromagnetic Spintronic Devices

In recent years, the field of antiferromagnetic spintronics has been substantially advanced. Electric-field control is a promising approach to achieving ultra-low power spintronic devices via suppressing Joule heating. In this article, cutting-edge research, including electric-field modulation of antiferromagnetic spintronic devices using strain, ionic liquids, dielectric materials, and electrochemical ionic migration, are comprehensively reviewed. Various emergent topics such as the Neel spin-orbit torque, chiral spintronics, topological antiferromagnetic spintronics, anisotropic magnetoresistance, memory devices, two-dimensional magnetism, and magneto-ionic modulation with respect to antiferromagnets are examined. In conclusion, we envision the possibility of realizing high-quality room-temperature antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions, antiferromagnetic spin logic devices, and artificial antiferromagnetic neurons. It is expected that this work provides an appropriate and forward-looking perspective that will promote the rapid development of this field.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Giant Piezospintronic Effect in a Noncollinear Antiferromagnetic Metal

One of the main bottleneck issues for room-temperature antiferromagnetic spintronic devices is the small signal read-out owing to the limited anisotropic magnetoresistance in antiferromagnets. However, this could be overcome by either utilizing the Berry-curvature-induced anomalous Hall resistance in noncollinear antiferromagnets or establishing tunnel junction devices based on effective manipulation of antiferromagnetic spins. In this work, we demonstrate the giant piezoelectric strain control of the spin structure and the anomalous Hall resistance in a noncollinear antiferromagnetic metal - D019 hexagonal Mn3Ga. Furthermore, we built tunnel junction devices with a diameter of 200 nm to amplify the maximum tunneling resistance ratio to more than 10% at room-temperature, which thus implies significant potential of noncollinear antiferromagnets for large signal-output and high-density antiferromagnetic spintronic device applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Nature of electrons from oxygen vacancies and polar catastrophe at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces

The relative significance of quantum conductivity correction and magnetic nature of electrons in understanding the intriguing low-temperature resistivity minimum and negative magnetoresistance of the two-dimensional electron gas at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces has been a long outstanding issue since its discovery. Here we report a comparative magnetotransport study on amorphous and oxygen-annealed crystalline LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures at a relatively high-temperature range, where the orbital scattering is largely suppressed by thermal fluctuations. Despite of a predominantly negative out-of-plane magnetoresistance effect for both, the magnetotransport is isotropic for amorphous LaAlO3/SrTiO3 while strongly anisotropic and well falls into a two-dimensional quantum correction frame for annealed crystalline LaAlO3/SrTiO3. These results clearly indicate that a large portion of electrons from oxygen vacancies are localized at low temperatures, serving as magnetic centers, while the electrons from the polar field are only weakly localized due to constructive interference between time-reversed electron paths in the clean limit and no signature of magnetic nature is visible.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Negligible oxygen vacancies, low critical current density, electric-field modulation, in-plane anisotropic and high-field transport of a superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructure

The emerging Ni-based superconducting oxide thin films are rather intriguing to the entire condensed matter physics. Here we report some brief experimental results on transport measurements for a 14-nm-thick superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 thin-film heterostructure with an onset transition temperature of ~9.5 K. Photoluminescence measurements reveal that there is negligible oxygen vacancy creation in the SrTiO3 substrate during thin-film deposition and post chemical reduction for the Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructure. It was found that the critical current density of the Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 thin-film heterostructure is relatively small, ~4x10^3 A/cm2. Although the surface steps of SrTiO3 substrates lead to an anisotropy for in-plane resistivity, the superconducting transition temperatures are almost the same. The out-of-plane magnetotransport measurements yield an upper critical field of ~11.4 T and an estimated in-plane Ginzburg-Landau coherence length of ~5.4 nm. High-field magnetotransport measurements up to 50 T reveal anisotropic critical fields at 1.8 K for three different measurement geometries and a complicated Hall effect. An electric field applied via the SrTiO3 substrate slightly varies the superconducting transition temperature. These experimental results could be useful for this rapidly developing field.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Observation of the Anomalous Hall Effect in a Collinear Antiferromagnet

Time-reversal symmetry breaking is the basic physics concept underpinning many magnetic topological phenomena such as the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) and its quantized variant. The AHE has been primarily accompanied by a ferromagnetic dipole moment, which hinders the topological quantum states and limits data density in memory devices, or by a delicate noncollinear magnetic order with strong spin decoherence, both limiting their applicability. A potential breakthrough is the recent theoretical prediction of the AHE arising from collinear antiferromagnetism in an anisotropic crystal environment. This new mechanism does not require magnetic dipolar or noncollinear fields. However, it has not been experimentally observed to date. Here we demonstrate this unconventional mechanism by measuring the AHE in an epilayer of a rutile collinear antiferromagnet RuO$_2$. The observed anomalous Hall conductivity is large, exceeding 300 S/cm, and is in agreement with the Berry phase topological transport contribution. Our results open a new unexplored chapter of time-reversal symmetry breaking phenomena in the abundant class of collinear antiferromagnetic materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

A two-dimensional electron gas based on a 5s oxide with high room-temperature mobility and strain sensitivity

The coupling of optical and electronic degrees of freedom together with quantum confinement in low-dimensional electron systems is particularly interesting for achieving exotic functionalities in strongly correlated oxide electronics. Recently, high room-temperature mobility has been achieved for a large bandgap transparent oxide - BaSnO$_3$ upon extrinsic La or Sb doping, which has excited significant research attention. In this work, we report the observation of room-temperature ferromagnetism in BaSnO$_3$ thin films and the realization of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) on the surface of transparent BaSnO$_3$ via oxygen vacancy creation, which exhibits a high carrier density of $\sim 7.72*10^{14} /{\rm cm}^2$ and a high room-temperature mobility of ~18 cm$^2$/V/s. Such a 2DEG is rather sensitive to strain and a less than 0.1% in-plane biaxial compressive strain leads to a giant resistance enhancement of 350% (more than 540 kOhm/Square) at room temperature. Thus, this work creates a new path to exploring the physics of low-dimensional oxide electronics and devices applicable at room temperature.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Noncollinear Spintronics and Electric-Field Control: A Review

Our world is composed of various materials with different structures, where spin structures have been playing a pivotal role in spintronic devices of the contemporary information technology. Apart from conventional collinear spin materials such as collinear ferromagnets and collinear antiferromagnetically coupled materials, noncollinear spintronic materials have emerged as hot spots of research attention owing to exotic physical phenomena. In this Review, we firstly introduce two types noncollinear spin structures, i.e., the chiral spin structure that yields real-space Berry phases and the coplanar noncollinear spin structure that could generate momentum-space Berry phases, and then move to relevant novel physical phenomena including topological Hall effect, anomalous Hall effect, multiferroic, Weyl fermions, spin-polarized current, and spin Hall effect without spin-orbit coupling in these noncollinear spin systems. Afterwards, we summarize and elaborate the electric-field control of the noncollinear spin structure and related physical effects, which could enable ultralow power spintronic devices in future. In the final outlook part, we emphasize the importance and possible routes for experimentally detecting the intriguing theoretically predicted spin-polarized current, verifying the spin Hall effect in the absence of spin-orbit coupling and exploring the anisotropic magnetoresistance and domain-wall-related magnetoresistance effects for noncollinear antiferromagnetic materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Integration of the Noncollinear Antiferromagnetic Metal Mn3Sn onto Ferroelectric Oxides for Electric-Field Control

Non-collinear antiferromagnetic materials have received dramatically increasing attention in the field of spintronics as their exotic topological features such as the Berry-curvature-induced anomalous Hall effect and possible magnetic Weyl states could be utilized in future topological antiferromagnetic spintronic devices. In this work, we report the successful integration of the antiferromagnetic metal Mn3Sn thin films onto ferroelectric oxide PMN-PT. By optimizing growth, we realized the large anomalous Hall effect with small switching magnetic fields of several tens mT fully comparable to those of bulk Mn3Sn single crystals, anisotropic magnetoresistance and negative parallel magnetoresistance in Mn3Sn thin films with antiferromagnetic order, which are similar to the signatures of the Weyl state in bulk Mn3Sn single crystals. More importantly, we found that the anomalous Hall effect in antiferromagnetic Mn3Sn thin films can be manipulated by electric fields applied onto the ferroelectric materials, thus demonstrating the feasibility of Mn3Sn-based topological spintronic devices operated in an ultralow power manner.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Antiferromagnetic Piezospintronics

Antiferromagnets naturally exhibit three obvious advantages over ferromagnets for memory device applications: insensitivity to external magnetic fields, much faster spin dynamics (~THz) and higher packing density due to the absence of any stray field. Recently, antiferromagnetic spintronics emerges as a cutting-edge field in the magnetic community. The key mission of this rapidly rising field is to steer the spins or spin axes of antiferromagnets via external stimuli and then realize advanced devices based on their physical property changes. Herein, the state of the art of antiferromagnetic spintronics is presented. Subsequently, the history of ferromagnetic/ferroelectric multiferroic composites is briefly revisited. Finally, we introduce an ultralow-power, long-range, and magnetic-field-insensitive approach for harnessing antiferromagnetic spins based on our recent experimental progress, i.e., piezoelectric strain control. Relevant theoretical and experimental studies have formed an attractive new branch in antiferromagnetic spintronics, which we coin as antiferromagnetic piezospintronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

A Piezoelectric, Strain-Controlled Antiferromagnetic Memory Insensitive to Magnetic Fields

Spintronic devices based on antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials hold the promise of fast switching speeds and robustness against magnetic fields. Different device concepts have been predicted and experimentally demonstrated, such as low-temperature AFM tunnel junctions that operate as spin-valves, or room-temperature AFM memory, for which either thermal heating in combination with magnetic fields, or Néel spin-orbit torque is used for the information writing process. On the other hand, piezoelectric materials were employed to control magnetism by electric fields in multiferroic heterostructures, which suppresses Joule heating caused by switching currents and may enable low energy-consuming electronic devices. Here, we combine the two material classes to explore changes of the resistance of the high-Néel-temperature antiferromagnet MnPt induced by piezoelectric strain. We find two non-volatile resistance states at room temperature and zero electric field, which are stable in magnetic fields up to 60 T. Furthermore, the strain-induced resistance switching process is insensitive to magnetic fields. Integration in a tunnel junction can further amplify the electroresistance. The tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance reaches ~11.2% at room temperature. Overall, we demonstrate a piezoelectric, strain-controlled AFM memory which is fully operational in strong magnetic fields and has potential for low-energy and high-density memory applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Anisotropic magneto-crystalline coupling of the skyrmion lattice in MnSi

We investigate the anisotropic nature of magnetocrystalline coupling between the crystallographic and skyrmion crystal (SKX) lattices in the chiral magnet MnSi by magnetic field-angle resolved resonant ultrasound spectroscopy. Abrupt changes are observed in the elastic moduli and attenuation when the magnetic field is parallel to the [011] crystallographic direction. These observations are interpreted in a phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory that identifies switching of the SKX orientation to be the result of an anisotropic magnetocrystalline coupling potential. Our paper sheds new light on the nature of magnetocrystalline coupling potential relevant to future spintronic applications.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Nanostructured complex oxides as a route towards thermal behavior in artificial spin ice systems

We have used soft x-ray photoemission electron microscopy to image the magnetization of single domain La$_{0.7}$Sr$_{0.3}$MnO$_{3}$ nano-islands arranged in geometrically frustrated configurations such as square ice and kagome ice geometries. Upon thermal randomization, ensembles of nano-islands with strong inter-island magnetic coupling relax towards low-energy configurations. Statistical analysis shows that the likelihood of ensembles falling into low-energy configurations depends strongly on the annealing temperature. Annealing to just below the Curie temperature of the ferromagnetic film (T$_{C}$ = 338 K) allows for a much greater probability of achieving low energy configurations as compared to annealing above the Curie temperature. At this thermally active temperature of 325 K, the ensemble of ferromagnetic nano-islands explore their energy landscape over time and eventually transition to lower energy states as compared to the frozen-in configurations obtained upon cooling from above the Curie temperature. Thus, this materials system allows for a facile method to systematically study thermal evolution of artificial spin ice arrays of nano-islands at temperatures modestly above room temperature.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Liquid-Gated High Mobility and Quantum Oscillation of the Two-Dimensional Electron Gas at an Oxide Interface

Electric field effect in electronic double layer transistor (EDLT) configuration with ionic liquids as the dielectric materials is a powerful means of exploring various properties in different materials. Here we demonstrate the modulation of electrical transport properties and extremely high mobility of two-dimensional electron gas at LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ (LAO/STO) interface through ionic liquid-assisted electric field effect. By changing the gate voltages, the depletion of charge carrier and the resultant enhancement of electron mobility up to 19380 cm$^2$/Vs are realized, leading to quantum oscillations of the conductivity at the LAO/STO interface. The present results suggest that high-mobility oxide interfaces which exhibit quantum phenomena could be obtained by ionic liquid-assisted field effect.

cond-mat.str-el↗