TY - JOUR
AU - C. Rayan Serrao
AU - J F Liu
AU - J.T Heron
AU - G Singh-Bhalla
AU - Ajay K Yadav
AU - S.J Suresha
AU - R.J Paull
AU - D Yi
AU - J.-H Chu
AU - M Trassin
AU - A Vishwanath
AU - E Arenholz
AU - C Frontera
AU - J Železný
AU - T Jungwirth
AU - X Marti
AU - Ramamoorthy Ramesh
AB - High-quality epitaxial thin films of Jeff = 1/2 Mott insulator Sr2IrO4 with increasing in-plane tensile strain have been grown on top of SrTiO3(001) substrates. Increasing the in-plane tensile strain up to ∼0.3% was observed to drop the c/a tetragonality by 1.2%. X-ray absorption spectroscopy detected a strong reduction of the linear dichroism upon increasing in-plane tensile strain towards a reduced anisotropy in the local electronic structure. While the most relaxed thin film shows a consistent dependence with previously reported single crystal bulk measurements, electrical transport reveals a charge gap reduction from 200 meV down to 50 meV for the thinnest and most epitaxy-distorted film. We argue that the reduced tetragonality plays a major role in the change of the electronic structure, which is reflected in the change of the transport properties. Our work opens the possibility for exploiting epitaxial strain as a tool for both structural and functional manipulation of spin-orbit Mott systems. © 2013 American Physical Society.
BT - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.085121
LA - eng
M1 - 8
N1 - cited By 58
N2 - High-quality epitaxial thin films of Jeff = 1/2 Mott insulator Sr2IrO4 with increasing in-plane tensile strain have been grown on top of SrTiO3(001) substrates. Increasing the in-plane tensile strain up to ∼0.3% was observed to drop the c/a tetragonality by 1.2%. X-ray absorption spectroscopy detected a strong reduction of the linear dichroism upon increasing in-plane tensile strain towards a reduced anisotropy in the local electronic structure. While the most relaxed thin film shows a consistent dependence with previously reported single crystal bulk measurements, electrical transport reveals a charge gap reduction from 200 meV down to 50 meV for the thinnest and most epitaxy-distorted film. We argue that the reduced tetragonality plays a major role in the change of the electronic structure, which is reflected in the change of the transport properties. Our work opens the possibility for exploiting epitaxial strain as a tool for both structural and functional manipulation of spin-orbit Mott systems. © 2013 American Physical Society.
PY - 2013
T2 - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
TI - Epitaxy-distorted spin-orbit Mott insulator in Sr2IrO 4 thin films
VL - 87
SN - 10980121
ER -