Designer Oxides: Reactive-Oxide Molecular Beam Epitaxy System

先进材料是一项关键的使能技术，是每一个新的或改进的设备或技术应用的核心。基于氧化物的材料具有巨大的潜力，可以在众多技术领域实现跨越式变革，其丰富的物理特性使其成为在从多相催化到新型量子电子学等领域实现变革性进步的理想候选者。然而，为了充分发挥其潜力，有必要开发调整其物理性能的方法，以便为给定应用“按需”稳定所需的材料特性组合。我们建议建立一个世界范围内独一无二的设备，用于指导合成设计师氧化物材料，为下一代氧化物技术铺平道路。这个新设备的核心将是最先进的反应氧化物分子束外延系统，能够生长原子级结构的过渡金属氧化物异质结构和亚稳态薄膜。它将耦合到现有的国家的最先进的光谱探针，包括低温扫描隧道显微镜和光谱和角度分辨光电发射。这将为原子和电子结构以及许多氧化物奇异性质核心的量子多体相互作用提供前所未有的反馈，揭示如何通过定制材料生长来调整这些结构，以创造新的先进材料。这将为相关电子系统、能量存储和收集材料、催化、传感、量子技术和纳米科学的研究开辟新的途径，所有这些都将利用人工氧化物中的定制状态。它将作为一个共享设施运营，我们的目标是将其建立为英国定制氧化物薄膜供应的领先中心。

Advanced materials are a key enabling technology, lying at the heart of every new or improved device or technology application. Oxide-based materials hold enormous promise to deliver a step change across a multitude of technology sectors, with their rich physical properties making them ideal candidates to deliver transformative advances in areas spanning from heterogeneous catalysis to novel quantum electronics. To realise their full potential, however, it is necessary to develop ways to tune their physical properties in order to stablise a desired combination of materials characteristics "on demand" for a given application. We propose the creation of a world-wide unique facility for such a guided synthesis of designer oxide materials, paving the way to next generation oxide-based technologies.The core of this new facility will be a state-of-the art reactive-oxide molecular-beam epitaxy system, enabling the growth of atomic-scale structured transition-metal oxide heterostructures and metastable thin films. It will be coupled to existing state-of-the-art spectroscopic probes including low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy and angle-resolved photoemission. This will provide unprecedented feedback on the atomic and electronic structure and the quantum many-body interactions at the heart of the exotic properties of many oxides, revealing how these can be tuned through custom materials growth to create new advanced materials. This will open new avenues for research in correlated electron systems, materials for energy storage and harvesting, catalysis, sensing, quantum technologies and nanoscience, all exploiting tailored states in artificial oxides. It will operate as a shared facility, which we aim to establish as a leading centre for the supply of custom oxide thin films within the UK.