Publication Date:
2016-05-05
Description:
Polar metals by geometric design Nature 533, 7601 (2016). doi:10.1038/nature17628 Authors: T. H. Kim, D. Puggioni, Y. Yuan, L. Xie, H. Zhou, N. Campbell, P. J. Ryan, Y. Choi, J.-W. Kim, J. R. Patzner, S. Ryu, J. P. Podkaminer, J. Irwin, Y. Ma, C. J. Fennie, M. S. Rzchowski, X. Q. Pan, V. Gopalan, J. M. Rondinelli & C. B. Eom 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 octahedra—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.
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Medicine
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Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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