Polar metals by geometric design

Autor: Tae Heon Kim, Yongseong Choi, Philip Ryan, Yanjun Ma, Jong-Woo Kim, James M. Rondinelli, Venkatraman Gopalan, Danilo Puggioni, Yakun Yuan, Mark Rzchowski, Chang-Beom Eom, J. R. Patzner, Hua Zhou, Sangwoo Ryu, Craig J. Fennie, J. P. Podkaminer, Xiaoqing Pan, Neil Campbell, Julian Irwin, Lin Xie
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nature. 533:68-72
ISSN: 1476-4687
0028-0836
Popis: Gauss's law dictates that the net electric field inside a conductor in electrostatic equilibrium is zero by effective charge screening; free carriers within a metal eliminate internal dipoles that may arise owing to asymmetric charge distributions. Quantum physics supports this view, demonstrating that delocalized electrons make a static macroscopic polarization, an ill-defined quantity in metals--it is exceedingly unusual to find a polar metal that exhibits long-range ordered dipoles owing to cooperative atomic displacements aligned from dipolar interactions as in insulating phases. Here we describe the quantum mechanical design and experimental realization of room-temperature polar metals in thin-film ANiO3 perovskite nickelates using a strategy based on atomic-scale control of inversion-preserving (centric) displacements. We predict with ab initio calculations that cooperative polar A cation displacements are geometrically stabilized with a non-equilibrium amplitude and tilt pattern of the corner-connected NiO6 octahedral--the structural signatures of perovskites--owing to geometric constraints imposed by the underlying substrate. Heteroepitaxial thin-films grown on LaAlO3 (111) substrates fulfil the design principles. We achieve both a conducting polar monoclinic oxide that is inaccessible in compositionally identical films grown on (001) substrates, and observe a hidden, previously unreported, non-equilibrium structure in thin-film geometries. We expect that the geometric stabilization approach will provide novel avenues for realizing new multifunctional materials with unusual coexisting properties.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: