Crossover of conduction mechanism in Sr2IrO4 epitaxial thin films

TL;DR

This study investigates how the conduction mechanism in Sr2IrO4 epitaxial thin films varies with thickness and temperature, revealing a crossover from Mott VRH to Efros-Shklovskii VRH and highlighting tunable insulating behavior.

Contribution

It uncovers the thickness- and temperature-dependent crossover of conduction mechanisms in Sr2IrO4 thin films, advancing understanding of their insulating properties related to strong spin-orbit coupling.

Findings

Mott VRH dominates in films thinner than 85 nm.

High-temperature thermal activation observed in thicker films.

Crossover from Mott to Efros-Shklovskii VRH at low temperatures indicating a Coulomb gap.

Abstract

High quality epitaxial Sr2IrO4 thin films with various thicknesses (9-300 nm) have been grown on SrTiO3 (001) substrates, and their electric transport properties have been investigated. All samples showed the expected insulating behavior with a strong resistivity dependence on film thickness, that can be as large as three orders of magnitude at low temperature. A close examination of the transport data revealed interesting crossover behaviors for the conduction mechanism upon variation of thickness and temperature. While Mott variable range hopping (VRH) dominated the transport for films thinner than 85 nm, high temperature thermal activation behavior was observed for films with large thickness, which was followed by a crossover from Mott to Efros-Shklovskii (ES) VRH in the low temperature range. This low temperature crossover from Mott to ES VRH indicates the presence of a Coulomb gap (~3 meV). Our results demonstrate the competing and tunable conduction in Sr2IrO4 thin films, which in turn would be helpful for understanding the insulating nature related to strong spin-orbit-coupling of the 5d iridates.