Invited Paper MI-ThM4
Detection and Control of Electronic Phase Competition in Complex Oxides
Thursday, November 3, 2011, 9:00 am, Room 105
Electronic phase separation is present in many complex material systems and has been linked to colossal magnetoresistance, high Tc superconductivity, and multiferroicity. Here, nanometer to micron sized regions of vastly different electronic and magnetic properties can coexist and compete within single crystal materials. We will discuss recent work on fabricating single crystal wires of electronically phase separated manganites to a size comparable to the domains of the electronic phases residing in the material; thereby allowing finite emergent regions to dominate device characteristics. This has given us a means to probe, observe and exploit properties which are hidden in unconfined systems. Transport measurements on simple confined structures reveal new properties such as ultrasharp jumps in resistivity, a reemergent metal-insulator transition, and discreet resistive hopping that are unseen in larger samples. We have found that these properties are also tunable through doping, strain, electric field and magnitude of confinement. This ability to control key elements of the underlying complex electronic correlations and observe the resulting changes in a material's behavior help answer questions about the fundamental physics that rule emergent phenomena in complex materials while opening the door to new device functionality.