Strain-induced conductivity accelerated recoveries in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructure with millimeter scale

Abstract

The transport and magnetic properties of LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ (LAO/STO) heterostructure have been studied during cooling and warming. The strain gradient perpendicular to the surface of the heterostructure increases with the thickness of LAO film. The conductivity accelerated recoveries (CAR) are found at 80 K and 176 K in the interface of LAO/STO sample with millimeter scale, and are more obvious for thicker LAO layers during warming. These two recovering temperatures correspond to the migrating energies of oxygen single vacancy and divacancy trapped by polarized domain walls, separately. This indicated that domain walls diffuse along the longitudinal direction and expand to larger area due the strain gradient perpendicular to the interface. The stable and precise accelerating recovering temperatures make the sample at a larger scale a potential widely applied temperature standard reference. The magnetization measurements reveal the coexistence of paramagnetic and diamagnetic in the LAO/STO samples at whole temperature from 2 K to 300 K. The abnormal electric resistance rise is observed with the decreasing temperature below 25 K for the samples of 7 and 15 LAO layers. This anomaly is attributed to the Kondo effect below 25 K and weak anti-localization below 5 K due to the weightier paramagnetic content. The larger diamagnetic content suppresses these contributions in 25 LAO layers sample. This work provided an insightful view that the strain modified structure domain leads to the enhancement of CAR effect, which helps to achieve a better understanding of domain related physics in the LAO/STO system.