Confinement-Induced Isosymmetric Metal-Insulator Transition in Ultrathin Epitaxial V 2 O 3 Films

Dimensional confinement has shown to be an effective strategy to tune competing degrees of freedom in complex oxides. Here, we achieved atomic layered growth of trigonal vanadium sesquioxide (V O ) by means of oxygen-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. This led to a series of high-quality epitaxial ult...

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Published in:ACS applied materials & interfaces 2024-04
Main Authors: Mellaerts, Simon, Bellani, Claudio, Hsu, Wei-Fan, Binetti, Alberto, Schouteden, Koen, Recaman-Payo, Maria, Menghini, Mariela, Rubio-Zuazo, Juan, López-Sánchez, Jesús, Seo, Jin Won, Houssa, Michel, Locquet, Jean-Pierre
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Dimensional confinement has shown to be an effective strategy to tune competing degrees of freedom in complex oxides. Here, we achieved atomic layered growth of trigonal vanadium sesquioxide (V O ) by means of oxygen-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. This led to a series of high-quality epitaxial ultrathin V O films down to unit cell thickness, enabling the study of the intrinsic electron correlations upon confinement. By electrical and optical measurements, we demonstrate a dimensional confinement-induced metal-insulator transition in these ultrathin films. We shed light on the Mott-Hubbard nature of this transition, revealing a vanishing quasiparticle weight as demonstrated by photoemission spectroscopy. Furthermore, we prove that dimensional confinement acts as an effective out-of-plane stress. This highlights the structural component of correlated oxides in a confined architecture, while opening an avenue to control both in-plane and out-of-plane lattice components by epitaxial strain and confinement, respectively.
ISSN:1944-8244
1944-8252
DOI:10.1021/acsami.3c18807