Transient electron scavengers modulate carrier density at a polar/nonpolar perovskite oxide heterojunction

Widitha S. Samarakoon, Peter V. Sushko, Dooyong Lee, Bharat Jalan, Hua Zhou, Yingge Du, Zhenxing Feng, Scott A. Chambers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We show how transient electron scavengers can be utilized to control the carrier concentration at polar/nonpolar perovskite interfaces. By combining quantitative synchrotron x-ray-based interface structure determination with ab initio modeling, we demonstrate that Nd vacancy formation and the resulting formation of Nd adatoms, stabilized by oxygen scavengers at the growth front, can quantitatively account for the decreased carrier concentration at the SrTiO3/n NdTiO3/SrTiO3(001) heterojunction for n=1 unit cell. This study yields insight into growth mechanisms and the effect of transient species and defects on the electronic properties of oxide heterojunctions.

Original language English (US) 103405 Physical Review Materials 6 10 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevmaterials.6.103405 Published - Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Work at PNNL was supported by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. 10122. PNNL is a multiprogram national laboratory operated for the DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL0-1830. W.S.S. acknowledges the support from OSU-PNNL Graduate Fellowship. Work at UMN was supported by the U.S. DOE through DE-SC0020211. The surface XRD was carried out at beamline 33-ID of the Advanced Photon Source, a DOE SC User Facility, operated for the DOE SC by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE SC User Facility supported by the SC of the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 using NERSC Award No. BES-ERCAP0021800.