Ultrathin quantum materials present a unique platform for the control of electronic, magnetic, and topological properties. A commonly observed phenomenon in many ultrathin quantum materials is that an undesired crossover from a metallic to insulating state occurs below a critical thickness. This presents a potential challenge for realizing ultrathin heterostructures of quantum materials when metallic properties are desired.

Here, members of PARADIM’s In-House Research Group use angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) to reveal the electronic structure, charge transfer, doping profile, and carrier effective masses in a layer-by-layer fashion for the interface between the Dirac nodal-line semimetal SrIrO3 and the correlated metallic Weyl ferromagnet SrRuO3.

It is shown here that metallicity can be preserved even down to a single SrIrO3 layer, due to the structural similarities between SrIrO3 and SrRuO3, and the overlapping iridium and ruthenium d orbitals. In addition, ARPES reveals that electrons are transferred from the SrIrO3 layer into the SrRuO3, with an estimated screening length of λ = 3.2 ± 0.1 Å.

What has been achieved:

Interface quantum materials have yielded a plethora of previously unknown phenomena, including unconventional superconductivity, topological phases, and possible Majorana fermions. Typically, such states are detected at the interface between two insulating constituents by electrical transport, but when either material is conducting, transport techniques become insensitive to interfacial properties. To overcome these limitations, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and molecular-beam epitaxy are used to reveal the electronic structure, charge transfer, doping profile, and carrier effective masses in a layer-by-layer fashion for the interface between the Dirac nodal-line semimetal SrIrO3 and the correlated metallic Weyl ferromagnet SrRuO3. It is found that electrons are transferred from the SrIrO3 or SrRuO3, with an estimated screening length of λ = 3.2 ± 0.1 Å. In addition, metallicity is preserved even down to a single SrIrO3 layer, where the dimensionality-driven metal-insulator transition typically observed in SrIrO3 is avoided because of strong hybridization of the Ir and Ru t2g states.

Importance of the Achievement:

While state-of-the-art synthesis methods have enabled the synthesis of ultrathin quantum materials down to a single unit cell, that is often accompanied with undesired effects, such as a change in their properties from metallic to insulating, something that could limit their potential usefulness in future devices. Here, we demonstrate that we are able to retain metallicity in a single-unit-cell-thick layer of SrIrO3 grown on another quantum material, SrRuO3. Due to a combination of their structural similarity and also the compatible orbital overlap between the Ru and Ir d orbitals, we find that we are, in fact, able to enhance (rather than destroy) the metallicity of a single unit cell of SrIrO3 when compared to the bulk.

Unique Feature(s) of the MIP that Enabled this Achievement:

This work was made possible by PARADIM's unique combination of state-of-the-art materials synthesis that enabled the synthesis of SrIrO3 / SrRuO3 heterostructures with a high degree of perfection, and in-situ ARPES spectroscopy that allowed the detection of the persistent metallicity of a single layer of SrIrO3 on SrRuO3.

The work was performed by members of the PARADIM In-House Research Group.