Dipole-correlated carrier transportation and orbital reconfiguration in strain-distorted SrNbxTi1−xO3/KTaO3

Abstract

Strong electron-correlations can result in un-conventional transportation behaviour, such as metal-insulator transitions, high temperature superconductivity and bad metal conduction. Here we report a distinct transportation characteristic achieved by actively coupling the carriers with randomly distributed lattice-dipoles for strain-distorted SrNb_xTi_1−xO₃. The strong electron correlations split the conduction band, and lead to a distinguished thermal-emitted carrier transportation with an activation energy of ∼10⁻² eV. Further consistency was demonstrated by the respective changes in orbital configurations observed in near edge X-ray absorption fine structures. The present investigation demonstrates new mechanisms for regulating the carrier transportation using polaronic electron correlations.