Dipole-correlated carrier transportation and orbital reconfiguration in strain-distorted SrNbxTi1-xO3/KTaO3

Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2017 Nov 15;19(44):29913-29917. doi: 10.1039/c7cp06495k.

Abstract

Strong electron-correlations can result in un-conventional transportation behaviour, such as metal-insulator transitions, high temperature superconductivity and bad metal conduction. Here we report a distinct transportation characteristic achieved by actively coupling the carriers with randomly distributed lattice-dipoles for strain-distorted SrNbxTi1-xO3. The strong electron correlations split the conduction band, and lead to a distinguished thermal-emitted carrier transportation with an activation energy of ∼10-2 eV. Further consistency was demonstrated by the respective changes in orbital configurations observed in near edge X-ray absorption fine structures. The present investigation demonstrates new mechanisms for regulating the carrier transportation using polaronic electron correlations.