Freestanding crystalline oxide perovskites down to the monolayer limit

Dianxiang Ji^#^{1

2}, Songhua Cai^#^{1

2}, Tula R Paudel^{3

4}, Haoying Sun^{1

2}, Chunchen Zhang^{1

2}, Lu Han^{1

2}, Yifan Wei^{1

2}, Yipeng Zang^{1

2}, Min Gu^{1

2}, Yi Zhang⁵, Wenpei Gao⁵, Huaixun Huyan⁵, Wei Guo^{1

2}, Di Wu^{1

2}, Zhengbin Gu^{1

2}, Evgeny Y Tsymbal^{3

4}, Peng Wang^{6

7}, Yuefeng Nie^{8

9}, Xiaoqing Pan^{10

11

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
⁴ Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁶ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. wangpeng@nju.edu.cn.
⁷ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. wangpeng@nju.edu.cn.
⁸ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ynie@nju.edu.cn.
⁹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ynie@nju.edu.cn.
¹⁰ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹¹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 31168106
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1255-7

Freestanding crystalline oxide perovskites down to the monolayer limit

Dianxiang Ji et al. Nature. 2019 Jun.

. 2019 Jun;570(7759):87-90.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1255-7. Epub 2019 Jun 5.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
⁴ Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁶ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. wangpeng@nju.edu.cn.
⁷ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. wangpeng@nju.edu.cn.
⁸ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ynie@nju.edu.cn.
⁹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ynie@nju.edu.cn.
¹⁰ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹¹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.
¹³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. xiaoqing.pan@uci.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 31168106
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1255-7

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides reveal the electronic phases that emerge when a bulk crystal is reduced to a monolayer^1-4. Transition-metal oxide perovskites host a variety of correlated electronic phases^5-12, so similar behaviour in monolayer materials based on transition-metal oxide perovskites would open the door to a rich spectrum of exotic 2D correlated phases that have not yet been explored. Here we report the fabrication of freestanding perovskite films with high crystalline quality almost down to a single unit cell. Using a recently developed method based on water-soluble Sr₃Al₂O₆ as the sacrificial buffer layer^13,14 we synthesize freestanding SrTiO₃ and BiFeO₃ ultrathin films by reactive molecular beam epitaxy and transfer them to diverse substrates, in particular crystalline silicon wafers and holey carbon films. We find that freestanding BiFeO₃ films exhibit unexpected and giant tetragonality and polarization when approaching the 2D limit. Our results demonstrate the absence of a critical thickness for stabilizing the crystalline order in the freestanding ultrathin oxide films. The ability to synthesize and transfer crystalline freestanding perovskite films without any thickness limitation onto any desired substrate creates opportunities for research into 2D correlated phases and interfacial phenomena that have not previously been technically possible.

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Comment in

How to make the thinnest possible free-standing sheets of perovskite materials.
Birkhölzer YA, Koster G. Birkhölzer YA, et al. Nature. 2019 Jun;570(7759):39-40. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-01710-9. Nature. 2019. PMID: 31168109 No abstract available.

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Freestanding crystalline oxide perovskites down to the monolayer limit

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Freestanding crystalline oxide perovskites down to the monolayer limit

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