Affiliation:
1. College of Electronic and Optical Engineering & College of Flexible Electronics (Future Technology) Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications Nanjing 210023 China
2. Jiangsu Province Engineering Research Center for Fabrication and Application of Special Optical Fiber Materials and Devices Nanjing 210036 China
3. School of Chemistry and Physics and QUT Centre for Materials Science Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Brisbane QLD 4000 Australia
Abstract
AbstractInterfaces of metal oxide heterojunctions display a variety of intriguing physical properties that enable novel applications in spintronics, quantum information, neuromorphic computing, and high‐temperature superconductivity. One such LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) heterojunction hosts a 2D electron liquid (2DEL) presenting remarkable 2D superconductivity and magnetism. However, these remarkable properties emerge only at very low temperatures, while the heterostructure fabrication is challenging even at the laboratory scale, thus impeding practical applications. Here, a novel plasma‐enabled fabrication concept is presented to develop the TiO2/Ti3O4 hetero‐phase bilayer with a 2DEL that exhibits features of a weakly localized Fermi liquid even at room temperature. The hetero‐phase bilayer is fabricated by applying a rapid plasma‐induced phase transition that transforms a specific portion of anatase TiO2 thin film into vacancy‐prone Ti3O4 in seconds. The underlying mechanism relies on the screening effect of the achieved high‐density electron liquid that suppresses the electron‐phonon interactions. The achieved “adiabatic” electron transport in the hetero‐phase bilayer offers strong potential for low‐loss electric or plasmonic circuits and hot electron harvesting and utilization. These findings open new horizons for fabricating diverse multifunctional metal oxide heterostructures as an innovative platform for emerging clean energy, integrated photonics, spintronics, and quantum information technologies.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,General Engineering,Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (miscellaneous),General Materials Science,General Chemical Engineering,Medicine (miscellaneous)