Paper on LaFeO3/n-SrTiO3 Published in Physical Review Materials

A paper led by Steven Spurgeon and Peter Sushko from Pacific Northwest National Lab building Dr. Comes’ previous work on the LaFeO₃/Nb-doped SrTiO₃ interface has just been published in Physical Review Materials. We examine the interface between the two materials using scanning transmission electron microscopy and complementary density functional theory modeling. In the work we find that ion intermixing and the surface termination of the substrate strongly affect the electronic structure of the resulting material. For a TiO₂-terminated substrate there is electron accumulation at the nominally positively charged LaO-TiO₂ interface. Meanwhile, for an SrO-terminated substrate intermixing removes an energetically unfavorable band alignment. These results go a long way to explaining some surprising observations from Dr. Comes’ initial work that was published in 2016 in Physical Review Letters. You can read more about the work in the PNNL news highlight here .