Physics of interface: Barrier with correlations and disorder sandwiched between two metallic planes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder affects the electronic properties of a metal-insulator-metal heterostructure, revealing a disorder-induced transition from insulator to metal by delocalizing wavefunctions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that explicit disorder can induce a metal-insulator transition, nullifying onsite correlations in a disordered Mott insulator sandwiched between metals.

Findings

Disorder induces a metal-insulator transition at a critical value.

Wavefunctions become delocalized with increasing disorder.

The transition corresponds to disorder nullifying onsite correlations.

Abstract

A Metal-Disordered Mott insulator-Metal heterostructure is studied at half-fiiling using unrestricted Hartree Fock method. The corresponding clean system has been shown to be an insulator for any finite on site correlation. Interestingly we find that introduction of explicit disorder induces a metal-insulator transition at a critical value of disorder. The critical value corresponds to the point at which disorder nullifies the effect of onsite correlation. The wavefunctions are found to delocalize by increasing disorder, rendering the system metallic.