Field-effect doping of strongly correlated electron systems

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During H18 we succeeded in fabricating SrTiO3-based field-effect transistors with epitaxial and amorphous CaHfO3 and DyScO3 gate insulator layers. Epitaxial insulator layers of CaHfO3 and DyScO3 could be grown on SrTiO3 to a thickness of about 2 nm without nucleating grain boundaries. By combining a thin epitaxial layer with an amorphous insulator, we achieved transistors where sheet carrier densities of 10^<13> cm^<-2> order could be induced in a thin surface layer of a SrTiO_3 substrate. A rapid increase of the field-effect mobility was observed at low temperature, indicating that the field-induced carriers are equivalent to chemically doped carriers. A metal-to-insulator transition was observed in the SrTiO_3 transistors.The growth of metallic LaTiO_3 nanowires was studied. A step-flow growth technique was developed that allowed us to fabricate an array of metallic (La, Sr)TiO_3 nanowires along the step edges of an annealed SrTiO_3 substrate. A technique was developed to buffer the surface of an annealed SrTiO_3 single crystal surface with a SrO film pror to the growth of the LaTiO_3 nanowires. This step was necessary in order to reduce the surface conductivity of SrTiO_3 and thus isolate the nanowires from each other. The final nanowire arrays showed nearly ideal one-dimensional conductivity.The superconducting properties of Nb-doped SrTiO_3 films were studied in collaboration with the group of prof. Triscone at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. We succeeded in fabricating superconducting Nb:SrTiO_3 thin films and demonstrated that the superconductivity can be switched on and off by changing the carrier concentration in the thin films by electrostatic field effect.