Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1210.8000

Electronic structure of TiO2 thin films and LaAlO3-SrTiO3 heterostructures: the role of titanium 3d1 states in magnetic and transport properties

Giovanni Drera
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In this Thesis, a study of the electronic structure of two Ti-based oxide systems, TiO2 thin films and the ultra-thin LaAlO3-SrTiO3 (LAO-STO) heterojunctions, is given. A weak room-temperature ferromagnetism (FM) has been detected in slightly reduced TiO2 thin film and in other oxides; as these materials are insulating closed-shell systems, this phenomenon has been classified as "d0 magnetism". Since this magnetism could be related to the growth process and to the presence of defects (oxygen vacancies, VO), an analysis of Ti electronic states (especially of Ti3+ energy levels) is mandatory. The first part of this work is devoted to the magnetic characterization of a set of TiO2 and N-doped TiO2 samples, together with the analysis of Ti 3d-related states carried out with X-ray photoemission (XPS) and resonant photoemission (ResPES). The hypothesis of clustered VO as the source of FM is then discussed in the light of the experimental and theoretical results. Another interesting oxide system in which the stoichiometry of Ti ions play a fundamental role is the LAO-STO interface. In fact, while LAO and STO separately are two band insulators, the interface created by growing LAO on the top of STO (001) has found to become metallic, hosting a 2D electron gas. The second part of this Thesis is devoted to the study of conductive and insulating LAO-STO interfaces, carried out by XPS, X-ray absorption (XAS) and with ResPES. The sample stoichiometry is evaluated through a comparison with LAO and STO single crystals. A resonance enhancement of the conductive Ti states, associated to Ti3+ ions, is reported and compared to theoretical calculations. On the basis of these results, the origin of metallic states in ultra-thin LAO-STO interfaces is properly addressed. In addition, a characterization of the structural disorder at the interface is shown, carried out with angle-resolved XPS.

Explore related subjects

cond-mat.str-elcond-mat.mtrl-sci

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Giovanni Drera. 2012-10-30. Electronic structure of TiO2 thin films and LaAlO3-SrTiO3 heterostructures: the role of titanium 3d1 states in magnetic and transport properties. https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.8000

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Competing Interlayer Loop Currents and Superconductivity in the Bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ Model

The recent discovery of high-$T_c$ superconductivity in pressurized and thin-film bilayer nickelates, featuring a strong interlayer exchange coupling, and their potential similarities with cuprate superconductors, has made this a very active topic in condensed matter physics. In the present paper we study the strongly correlated one-orbital ($d_{x^2-y^2}$) bilayer $t$-$J_\perp$-$V$ model for nickelates, where $V$ denotes the Coulomb interactions, using a controlled large-$N$ expansion at and beyond the mean-field level. Focusing on the out-of-plane spin exchange interaction ($J_\perp$), we find that it triggers both out-of-plane $s$-wave superconductivity and an out-of-plane bond-order phase ($z$-BOP) instability. The $z$-BOP gives rise to a complex $z$-axis hopping dominated by its imaginary component, which drives out-of-plane currents and induces in-plane ones, spontaneously forming on the vertical plaquettes a loop-current state that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Competition between this loop-current phase and superconductivity yields a dome-shaped superconducting region, with optimal superconductivity occurring near the $z$-BOP quantum critical point. The resulting phase diagram features a pure loop-current region, a low-doping coexistence phase, a pure superconducting state at higher doping, and a correlated metallic state.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2026

Optically induced metallic state with persistent monoclinic symmetry in NdNiO$_3$

Understanding whether electronic and structural order remain coupled under nonequilibrium conditions is a central challenge in correlated materials. Here, we simultaneously track metallicity and symmetry across the photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition in NdNiO$_3$ using time-resolved optical reflectivity and symmetry-sensitive second-harmonic generation. We find that metallic reflectivity emerges at significantly lower excitation fluence than restoration of the orthorhombic high-temperature symmetry. As a result, optical excitation stabilizes a metastable state that combines the reflectivity of the metallic phase with the monoclinic symmetry of the insulating phase, revealing an optically induced monoclinic metal. Only at substantially higher fluences does the symmetry fully recover to that of the high-temperature phase. These results demonstrate a nonequilibrium decoupling of metallicity and structural symmetry and establish simultaneous multiprobe spectroscopy as a powerful approach for identifying emergent phases in correlated materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2026

Instabilities in self-consistent diagrammatic approaches and how to cure them

While self-consistent diagrammatic approaches are widely used to compute the physical properties of correlated quantum materials, their applicability may get severely hindered precisely in the parameter regions, where the most exciting physics is observed. One of the major issues, referred to as "misleading convergence", is the tendency of iterative schemes to converge to unphysical fixed points for intermediate-to-strong electronic interactions, regardless of numerical accuracy of the computation. Here, we explicitly verify that the origin of this problem in several established self-consistent many-electron approaches, defined in the general diagrammatic framework of the boson-exchange formalism, resides exclusively in the stability condition of the respective iteration schemes, and not in an intrinsic breakdown of their self-consistent diagrammatic description. This insight enables a simple and general remedy, as recently proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 016502 (2026): The redefinition of the iterative procedure, by inverting the unstable eigendirections of the Jacobian associated to the fixed point of the self-consistent algorithm. We illustrate the successful outcome of this procedure by means of systematic calculations performed on testbed, exactly solvable, models. Our results demonstrate that the physical fixed point of the diagrammatic schemes we considered can be stabilized, de facto, across the entire parameter range, including the most challenging nonperturbative/strong-coupling regimes.

cond-mat.str-el↗