The polar and nonpolar interfaces influenced of magnetism in LaMnO3-based superlattices

Abstract

The interface of perovskite heterostructures has been shown to exhibit various electronic and magnetic phases such as two-dimensional electron gas, magnetism, superconductivity, and electronic phase separation. These rich phases are expected due to the strong interplay between spin, charge, and orbital degree of freedom at the interface. In this work, the polar and nonpolar interfaces are designed in LaMnO₃-based (LMO) superlattices to investigate the difference in magnetic and transport properties. For the polar interface in a LMO/SrMnO₃ superlattice, a novel robust ferromagnetism, exchange bias effect, vertical magnetization shift, and metallic behaviors coexist due to the polar catastrophe, which results in a double exchange coupling effect in the interface. For the nonpolar interface in a LMO/LaNiO₃ superlattice, only the ferromagnetism and exchange bias effect characteristics exist due to the polar continuous interface. This is attributed to the charge transfer between Mn³⁺ and Ni³⁺ ions at the interface. Therefore, transition metal oxides exhibit various novel physical properties due to the strong correlation of d electrons and the polar and nonpolar interfaces. Our observations may provide an approach to further tune the properties using the selected polar and nonpolar oxide interfaces.