Direct experimental evidence of physical origin of electronic phase separation in manganites

Electronic phase separation in complex oxides is the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of electronic phases, involving length scales much larger than those of structural defects or nonuniform distribution of chemical dopants. While experimental efforts focused on phase separation and established it...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 117; no. 13; pp. 7090 - 7094
Main Authors Miao, Tian, Deng, Lina, Yang, Wenting, Ni, Jinyang, Zheng, Changlin, Etheridge, Joanne, Wang, Shasha, Liu, Hao, Lin, Hanxuan, Yu, Yang, Shi, Qian, Cai, Peng, Zhu, Yinyan, Yang, Tieying, Zhang, Xingmin, Gao, Xingyu, Xi, Chuanying, Tian, Mingliang, Wu, Xiaoshan, Xiang, Hongjun, Dagotto, Elbio, Yin, Lifeng, Shen, Jian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 31.03.2020
Subjects
Alloying
External stimuli
Manganites
Phase diagrams
Phase separation
Physical Sciences
Spatial distribution
Superlattices
tricolor superlattice
chemical ordering
electronic phase separation
manganites
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Summary:Electronic phase separation in complex oxides is the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of electronic phases, involving length scales much larger than those of structural defects or nonuniform distribution of chemical dopants. While experimental efforts focused on phase separation and established its correlation with nonlinear responses under external stimuli, it remains controversial whether phase separation requires quenched disorder for its realization. Early theory predicted that if perfectly “clean” samples could be grown, both phase separation and nonlinearities would be replaced by a bicritical-like phase diagram. Here, using a layer-by-layer superlattice growth technique we fabricate a fully chemically ordered “tricolor” manganite superlattice, and compare its properties with those of isovalent alloyed manganite films. Remarkably, the fully ordered manganite does not exhibit phase separation, while its presence is pronounced in the alloy. This suggests that chemical-dopinginduced disorder is crucial to stabilize the potentially useful nonlinear responses of manganites, as theory predicted.
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1L.D. and W.Y. contributed equally to this work.
Author contributions: J.S. designed research; T.M., L.D., W.Y., J.N., C.Z., J.E., S.W., H. Liu, H. Lin, Y.Y., Q.S., P.C., Y.Z., T.Y., X.Z., X.G., C.X., M.T., and H.X. performed research; T.M., C.Z., J.E., T.Y., X.Z., X.W., H.X., E.D., L.Y., and J.S. analyzed data; and T.M., E.D., L.Y., and J.S. wrote the paper.
Edited by Tsuyoshi Kimura, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Gabriel Aeppli February 19, 2020 (received for review November 20, 2019)
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1920502117