Uniaxial Strain-Controlled Ground States in Manganite Films

Feng Jin*, Mingqiang Gu, Chao Ma, Er Jia Guo, Jin Zhu, Lili Qu, Zixun Zhang, Kexuan Zhang, Liqiang Xu, Binbin Chen, Feng Chen, Guanyin Gao, James M. Rondinelli, Wenbin Wu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Strongly correlated perovskite oxides exhibit a plethera of intriguing phenomena and stimulate a great potential for multifunctional device applications. Utilizing tunable uniaxial strain, rather than biaxial or anisotropic strain, delivered from the crystallography of a single crystal substrate to modify the ground state of strongly correlated perovskite oxides has rarely been addressed for phase-space control. Here, we show that the physical properties of La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 (LCMO) films are remarkably different depending on the crystallographic orientations of the orthorhombic NdGaO3 (NGO) substrates. More importantly, the antiferromagnetic charge-ordered insulating (COI) phase induced in the (100) or (001)-oriented LCMO films can be dramatically promoted (or suppressed) by a uniaxial tensile (or compressive) bending stress along the in-plane [010] direction. By contrast, the COI phase is nearly unaffected along the other transverse in-plane directions. Results from scanning transmission electron microscopy reveal that the (100)-or (001)-oriented LCMO films are uniaxially tensile strained along the [010] direction, while the LCMO/NGO(010) and LCMO/NGO(110) films remaining as a bulklike ferromagnetic metallic state exhibit a different strain state. Density functional theory calculations further reveal that the cooperatively increased Jahn-Teller distortion and charge ordering may be indispensible for the inducing and promoting of the COI phase. These findings provide a path to understand the correlation between local and extended structural distortions imparted by coherent epitaxy and the electronic states for quantum phase engineering.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1131-1140
Number of pages10
JournalNano letters
Volume20
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 12 2020

Keywords

  • density functional theory calculations
  • manganite thin films
  • phase separation
  • scanning transmission electron microscopy
  • uniaxial strain engineering

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Bioengineering
  • Chemistry(all)
  • Materials Science(all)
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Mechanical Engineering

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