Journal Article

Control of octahedral rotations via octahedral connectivity in an epitaxially strained 1 u.c.//4 u.c. LaNiO.sub.3/LaGaO.sub.3 superlattice

Geiger, D, Chen, X. D, Keimer, B, Kaiser, U, Habermeier, H.-U, Kinyanjui, M. K, Qi, H. Y, Benckiser, E, Biskupek, J

2016

Overview

For ABO.sub.3 perovskites, the magnetic and electronic properties couple strongly to the BO.sub.6 octahedral rotations and distortions. Therefore, precise control of the octahedral rotations and distortions via epitaxial strain and interfacial octahedral connectivity has become the key for engineering novel functionalities in ABO.sub.3 heterostructures and superlattices. In this paper, we investigated the local octahedral rotations in a [(1 unit cell (u.c.)//4 u.c.) x 13] LaNiO.sub.3/LaGaO.sub.3 superlattice grown on a (001) SrTiO.sub.3 substrate. By using aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, we found that the octahedral rotations of NiO.sub.6 adopted the same [100] and [010] rotational magnitudes as the neighboring GaO.sub.6 till the surface of the superlattice. Our results indicate that in LaNiO.sub.3-based superlattices, the NiO.sub.6 rotations can be precisely controlled via interfacial octahedral connectivity when the thickness of the LaNiO.sub.3 layer is only 1 unit cell.

• Publisher: Springer
• Subject: Epitaxy