New electronic structure in short-period complex oxide superlattices

This is a copy of the slides presented at the meeting but not formally written up for the volume. At heterojunctions between different oxide perovskite phases both lattice and electronic structure is modified by the junction. One interesting question that several groups have studied is just how far into the neighboring materials these perturbations extend. We have studied this for insulating phases as well as conducting phases. For insulating phases it appears that the lattice distortions are healed in a layer about one unit cell thick. By stacking different materials each of which is only a single unit cell thick we have obtained materials that exhibit new properties determined by the stacking architecture. For example, superlattices that lack inversion symmetry have a built-in polarization that is controlled by the direction of the strain asymmetry. For conducting phases, the electronic structure also seems to be modified mainly in a layer only a few unit cells thick. We have studied this in superlattices of SrTiO3 and LaMnO3 in which we vary the thickness of the layers. We use optical conductivity to probe the electronic structure in the near infrared to near ultraviolet spectral region. The conductivity is close to the average of the two constituents, but differs in certain spectral regions, especially for the films with the thinnest supercells.This work was supported by the Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences program at the Fredrick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL.