| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Novel Trends in Synchrotron and FEL-Based Analysis Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session SA+AC+MI-ThM |
| Session: | Frontiers in Probing Properties and Dynamics of Nanostructures and Correlation Spectroscopy |
| Presenter: | Elke Arenholz, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Engineering novel materials with structural, electronic and/or magnetic characteristics beyond what is found in bulk systems is possible today through the technique of thin film epitaxy, effectively a method of ‘spray painting’ atoms on single crystalline substrates to create precisely customized thin films or layered structures with atomic arrangements defined by the underlying substrate. The abrupt change of composition at as well as charge and spin transfer across interfaces can also lead to intriguing and important new phenomena testing our understanding of basic physics and creating new functionalities.
We use soft x-ray spectroscopy and scattering to probe and understand the electronic, magnetic and structural characteristics of novel engineered materials such as magnetoelectric multiferroics, i.e. materials that exhibit simultaneous order in their electric and magnetic ground states. These materials hold promise for use in next-generation memory devices in which electric fields control magnetism but are exceedingly rare in bulk form. Engineering magnetoelectric multiferroics by interleaving two or more atomically thin layers is an intriguing new approach. A very recent example is establishing room temperature coexisting ferromagnetic and ferroelectric order in LuFeO3)m/(LuFe2O4)1 superlattices. [1] We used soft x-ray spectroscopy and microscopy to characterize the magnetic order and ferroelectric polarization of the system.
Similarly intriguing is engineering the orbital symmetry of emergent quantum states near the Fermi edge at interfaces determining the mobility of interfacial conduction electrons in novel heterostructures. Using soft x-ray linear dichroism (XLD), we investigated the orbital stares of interfacial electrons in Al2O3/SrTiO3 and developed an interesting route to engineer emergent quantum states with deterministic orbital symmetry [2].
[1] J. A. Mundy et al., Nature 537, 523 (2016).
[2] Y. Cao et al., npj Quantum Materials 1, 16009 (2016).