Paper PS+AS+EL+EM+SE-WeM10
Invited Talk-Future Stars of AVS Session: Three-Dimensional Imaging of Complex Oxide Interfaces

Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 11:00 am, Room 104B

Complex oxide materials have a wide range of exciting tunable electronic and magnetic phases including ferroelectricity and superconductivity. The ability to fabricate atomic layers of complex oxides has led to the formation of novel interfaces and heterostructures of scientific and technological interest. The functional properties are usually correlated to sub-Angstrom structural perturbations at these interfaces. In this talk, a non-destructive synchrotron X-ray three-dimensional imaging technique will be applied to understand thickness-dependent electronic and magnetic transitions which occur in rare-earth manganite films with thicknesses on the order of an atomic layer. We show that structural distortions arising due to the electrostatic interfacial boundary conditions of the thin films are related to their thickness-dependent phase transitions. Based on these results, we show that heterostructures can be designed by molecular beam epitaxy to tune the atomic-scale structure of the manganite films to achieve robust ferromagnetism in atomically-thin layers. These results have important implications for the design of oxide-based spintronic devices and provide an important pathway for the realization of novel functional materials.