Fabricating Superconducting Interfaces between Artificially-Grown LaAlO$_3$ and SrTiO$_3$ Thin Films

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the successful fabrication of a superconducting two-dimensional electron gas at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces by optimizing growth temperature to prevent surface segregation and defects, enabling new functional oxide interfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a method to achieve superconducting 2DEGs at artificially-grown LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces by controlling growth conditions, especially temperature.

Findings

Superconducting 2DEG realized at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces.

High growth temperature prevents SrO segregation and defects.

Superconductivity observed down to lowest temperatures.

Abstract

Realization of a fully metallic two-dimensional electron gas at the interface between artificially-grown LaAlO$_3$ and SrTiO$_3$ thin films has been an exciting challenge. Here we present for the first time the successful realization of a superconducting 2DEG at interfaces between artificially-grown LaAlO$_3$ and SrTiO$_3$ thin films. Our results highlight the importance of two factors-the growth temperature and the SrTiO$_3$ termination. We use local friction force microscopy and transport measurements to determine that in normal growth conditions the absence of a robust metallic state at low temperature in the artificially-grown LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interface is due to the nanoscale SrO segregation occurring on the SrTiO$_3$ film surface during the growth and the associated defects in the SrTiO$_3$ film. By adopting an extremely high SrTiO$_3$ growth temperature, we demonstrate a way to realize metallic, down to the lowest temperature, and superconducting 2DEG at interfaces between LaAlO$_3$ layers and artificially-grown SrTiO$_3$ thin films. This study paves the way to the realization of functional LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ superlattices and/or artificial LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interfaces on other substrates.