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BaTiO3 is a technologically relevant material in the perovskite oxide class with above‐room‐temperature ferroelectricity and a very large electro‐optical coefficient, making it highly suitable for emerging electronic and photonic devices. An easy, robust, straightforward, and scalable growth method is required to synthesize epitaxial BaTiO3 thin films with sufficient control over the film's stoichiometry to achieve reproducible thin film properties. Here the growth of BaTiO3 thin films by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy is reported. A self‐regulated growth window is identified using complementary information obtained from reflection high energy electron diffraction, the intrinsic film lattice parameter, film surface morphology, and scanning transmission electron microscopy. Subsequent optical characterization of the BaTiO3 films by spectroscopic ellipsometry revealed refractive index and extinction coefficient values closely resembling those of stoichiometric bulk BaTiO3 crystals for films grown inside the growth window. Even in the absence of a lattice parameter change of BaTiO3 thin films, degradation of optical properties is observed, accompanied by the appearance of a wide optical absorption peak in the IR spectrum, attributed to optical transitions involving defect states present. Therefore, the optical properties of BaTiO3 can be utilized as a much finer and more straightforward probe to determine the stoichiometry level present in BaTiO3 films. BaTiO3 films are grown by different thin film techniques, however, the lack of stoichiometry control makes it hard to achieve bulk‐like properties. Here, hybrid molecular beam epitaxy is employed to grow BaTiO3 films. Using this approach, a self‐regulated growth window is accessed, making it ideally suited as an easy, robust, straightforward, and scalable growth method to synthesize epitaxial BaTiO3 thin films with sufficient control over the film's stoichiometry and to realize bulk‐like BaTiO3 properties in thin film form.

This manuscript presents a working model linking chemical disorder and transport properties in correlated‐electron perovskites with high‐entropy formulations and a framework to actively design them. This work demonstrates this new learning in epitaxial Srx(Ti,Cr,Nb,Mo,W)O3 thin films that exhibit exceptional crystalline fidelity despite a diverse chemical formulation where most B‐site species are highly misfit with respect to valence and radius. X‐ray diffraction, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy confirm a unique combination of chemical disorder and structural perfection in thin and thick epitaxial layers. This combination produces an optical transparency window that surpasses that of the constituent end‐members in the UV and IR, while maintaining relatively low electrical resistivity. This work addresses the computational challenges of modeling such systems and investigate short‐range ordering using cluster expansion. These results showcase that unusual d‐metal combinations access an expanded property design space that is predictable using end‐member characteristics and their interactions – though unavailable to them – thus offering performance advances in optical, high‐frequency, spintronic, and quantum devices. Kinetically arrested, chemically disordered perovskite thin films exhibit exquisite crystalline fidelity, broad IR–UV transparency, and low resistivity, despite incorporating five mismatched 3d–5d cations, including Cr and W. This study unites electronic correlation, cation diversity, valence complexity, and disorder—enabling new transparent conductors and paving the way toward novel quantum and spintronic applications.

Collective interactions in functional materials can enable novel macroscopic properties like insulator-to-metal transitions. While implementing such materials into field-effect-transistor technology can potentially augment current state-of-the-art devices by providing unique routes to overcome their conventional limits, attempts to harness the insulator-to-metal transition for high-performance transistors have experienced little success. Here, we demonstrate a pathway for harnessing the abrupt resistivity transformation across the insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ), to design a hybrid-phase-transition field-effect transistor that exhibits gate controlled steep (‘sub- kT/q ’) and reversible switching at room temperature. The transistor design, wherein VO 2 is implemented in series with the field-effect transistor’s source rather than into the channel, exploits negative differential resistance induced across the VO 2 to create an internal amplifier that facilitates enhanced performance over a conventional field-effect transistor. Our approach enables low-voltage complementary n-type and p-type transistor operation as demonstrated here, and is applicable to other insulator-to-metal transition materials, offering tantalizing possibilities for energy-efficient logic and memory applications. The intrinsic properties of conventional semiconductors limits the speed and efficiency of field-effect transistors. Here, the authors take advantage of the insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide to create a transistor with reversible and steep-slope switching at room temperature.

Transition metal oxides offer functional properties beyond conventional semiconductors. Bridging the gap between the fundamental research frontier in oxide electronics and their realization in commercial devices demands a wafer-scale growth approach for high-quality transition metal oxide thin films. Such a method requires excellent control over the transition metal valence state to avoid performance deterioration, which has been proved challenging. Here we present a scalable growth approach that enables a precise valence state control. By creating an oxygen activity gradient across the wafer, a continuous valence state library is established to directly identify the optimal growth condition. Single-crystalline VO 2 thin films have been grown on wafer scale, exhibiting more than four orders of magnitude change in resistivity across the metal-to-insulator transition. It is demonstrated that ‘electronic grade’ transition metal oxide films can be realized on a large scale using a combinatorial growth approach, which can be extended to other multivalent oxide systems. Precise valence state control to avoid performance deterioration in transition metal oxide films has proved challenging. Here, the authors establish a combinatorial approach to create a valence state library of VO 2 , allowing for the growth of wafer size VO 2 thin films.

As the length scales of materials decrease, the heterogeneities associated with interfaces become almost as important as the surrounding materials. This has led to extensive studies of emergent electronic and magnetic interface properties in superlattices 1 – 9 . However, the interfacial vibrations that affect the phonon-mediated properties, such as thermal conductivity 10 , 11 , are measured using macroscopic techniques that lack spatial resolution. Although it is accepted that intrinsic phonons change near boundaries 12 , 13 , the physical mechanisms and length scales through which interfacial effects influence materials remain unclear. Here we demonstrate the localized vibrational response of interfaces in strontium titanate–calcium titanate superlattices by combining advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy imaging and spectroscopy, density functional theory calculations and ultrafast optical spectroscopy. Structurally diffuse interfaces that bridge the bounding materials are observed and this local structure creates phonon modes that determine the global response of the superlattice once the spacing of the interfaces approaches the phonon spatial extent. Our results provide direct visualization of the progression of the local atomic structure and interface vibrations as they come to determine the vibrational response of an entire superlattice. Direct observation of such local atomic and vibrational phenomena demonstrates that their spatial extent needs to be quantified to understand macroscopic behaviour. Tailoring interfaces, and knowing their local vibrational response, provides a means of pursuing designer solids with emergent infrared and thermal responses. The vibrational states emerging at the interface in oxide superlattices are characterized theoretically and at atomic resolution, showing the impact of material length scales on structure and vibrational response.

The reactive force-field (ReaxFF) interatomic potential is a powerful computational tool for exploring, developing and optimizing material properties. Methods based on the principles of quantum mechanics (QM), while offering valuable theoretical guidance at the electronic level, are often too computationally intense for simulations that consider the full dynamic evolution of a system. Alternatively, empirical interatomic potentials that are based on classical principles require significantly fewer computational resources, which enables simulations to better describe dynamic processes over longer timeframes and on larger scales. Such methods, however, typically require a predefined connectivity between atoms, precluding simulations that involve reactive events. The ReaxFF method was developed to help bridge this gap. Approaching the gap from the classical side, ReaxFF casts the empirical interatomic potential within a bond-order formalism, thus implicitly describing chemical bonding without expensive QM calculations. This article provides an overview of the development, application, and future directions of the ReaxFF method.

Advancements in materials synthesis have been key to unveil the quantum nature of electronic properties in solids by providing experimental reference points for a correct theoretical description. Here, we report hidden transport phenomena emerging in the ultraclean limit of the archetypical correlated electron system SrVO 3 . The low temperature, low magnetic field transport was found to be dominated by anisotropic scattering, whereas, at high temperature, we find a yet undiscovered phase that exhibits clear deviations from the expected Landau Fermi liquid, which is reminiscent of strange-metal physics in materials on the verge of a Mott transition. Further, the high sample purity enabled accessing the high magnetic field transport regime at low temperature, which revealed an anomalously high Hall coefficient. Taken with the strong anisotropic scattering, this presents a more complex picture of SrVO 3 that deviates from a simple Landau Fermi liquid. These hidden transport anomalies observed in the ultraclean limit prompt a theoretical reexamination of this canonical correlated electron system beyond the Landau Fermi liquid paradigm, and more generally serves as an experimental basis to refine theoretical methods to capture such nontrivial experimental consequences emerging in correlated electron systems. A correlated material SrVO 3 has been considered to be a Fermi liquid, however previous studies have been limited to disordered samples. Here the authors study transport in ultraclean films of SrVO 3 , finding deviations from the Fermi liquid picture.

The availability of native substrates is a cornerstone in the development of microelectronic technologies relying on epitaxial films. If native substrates are not available, virtual substrates - crystalline buffer layers epitaxially grown on a structurally dissimilar substrate - offer a solution. Realizing commercially viable virtual substrates requires the growth of high-quality films at high growth rates for large-scale production. We report the stoichiometric growth of SrTiO 3 exceeding 600 nm hr −1 . This tenfold increase in growth rate compared to SrTiO 3 grown on silicon by conventional methods is enabled by a self-regulated growth window accessible in hybrid molecular beam epitaxy. Overcoming the materials integration challenge for complex oxides on silicon using virtual substrates opens a path to develop new electronic devices in the More than Moore era and silicon integrated quantum computation hardware. A scalable method for the growth of perovskite oxides thin films on silicon is desirable for integration of buffer layers in devices. Here the authors demonstrate the stoichiometric growth of thin SrTiO 3 layers on silicon at high growth rates by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy.

Few materials have been identified as high-performance transparent conductors in the visible regime (400–700 nm). Even fewer conductors are known to be transparent in ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, especially at wavelengths below 320 nm. Doped wide-bandgap semiconductors employed currently as UV transparent conductors have insufficient electrical conductivities, posing a significant challenge for achieving low resistance electrodes. Here, we propose SrNbO 3 as an alternative transparent conductor material with excellent performance not only in the visible, but also in the UV spectrum. The high transparency to UV light originates from energetic isolation of the conduction band, which shifts the absorption edge into the UV regime. The standard figure of merit measured for SrNbO 3 in the UV spectral range of 260–320 nm is on par with indium tin oxide in the visible, making SrNbO 3 an ideal electrode material in high-performance UV light emitting diodes relevant in sanitation application, food packaging, UV photochemotherapy, and biomolecule sensing. Optically transparent electrodes with high electrical conductance are essential for the implementation of optoelectronics, but current technology performs poorly in the ultraviolet regime. Here, SrNbO 3 is proposed as an alternative material due to its high figure of merit in the ultraviolet range.

We report the growth of InSe films on semi-insulating GaAs(111)B substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Excellent nucleation behavior resulted in the growth of smooth, single-phase InSe films. The dominant polytype was the targeted γ-InSe. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence of three bulk polytypes β, γ, and ε-InSe arranged in nanosized domains, which can be interpreted as sequences of stacking faults and rotational twin boundaries of γ-InSe. Additionally, a centrosymmetric Se-In-In-Se layer polymorph with P 3 ̅ m symmetry was identified as typically not present in bulk. Sizeable differences in their electronic properties were found, which resulted in sizeable electronic disorder arising from the nanoscale polytype arrangement that dominated the electronic transport properties. While MBE is a viable synthesis route towards stabilization of InSe polytypes not present in the bulk, an improved understanding to form the targeted polymorph is required to ultimately inscribe a layer sequence on demand utilizing bottom-up synthesis approaches.