Ultrafast strain engineering in complex oxide heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates ultrafast optical excitation of lattice vibrations in complex oxide heterostructures, leading to a significant and long-lasting increase in electrical conductivity, opening new avenues for rapid electronic phase control.

Contribution

It introduces a method of using femtosecond mid-infrared pulses to induce and control electronic phases in oxide heterostructures via vibrational excitation.

Findings

Long-lived five-order-of-magnitude increase in conductivity

Structural distortion propagates across interfaces

Potential for THz-rate electronic phase control

Abstract

We report on ultrafast optical experiments in which femtosecond mid-infrared radiation is used to excite the lattice of complex oxide heterostructures. By tuning the excitation energy to a vibrational mode of the substrate, a long-lived five-order-of-magnitude increase of the electrical conductivity of NdNiO3 epitaxial thin films is observed as a structural distortion propagates across the interface. Vibrational excitation, extended here to a wide class of heterostructures and interfaces, may be conducive to new strategies for electronic phase control at THz repetition rates.