Dislocation-Assisted Quasi-Two-Dimensional Semiconducting Nanochannels Embedded in Perovskite Thin Films

Huaixun Huyan; Zhe Wang; Linze Li; Xingxu Yan; Yi Zhang; Colin Heikes; Darrell G Schlom; Ruqian Wu; Xiaoqing Pan

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03404

Dislocation-Assisted Quasi-Two-Dimensional Semiconducting Nanochannels Embedded in Perovskite Thin Films

Nano Lett. 2023 Jun 28;23(12):5409-5416. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03404. Epub 2023 Jun 12.

Authors

Huaixun Huyan¹, Zhe Wang², Linze Li¹, Xingxu Yan^{1

3}, Yi Zhang¹, Colin Heikes⁴, Darrell G Schlom⁴, Ruqian Wu⁵, Xiaoqing Pan^{1

5

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, California 92697, United States.
² State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
³ Irvine Materials Research Institute, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, California 92697, United States.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850, United States.
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, California 92697, United States.

Abstract

Defect engineering in perovskite thin films has attracted extensive attention recently due to the films' atomic-scale modification, allowing for remarkable flexibility to design novel nanostructures for next generation nanodevices. However, the defect-assisted three-dimensional nanostructures in thin film matrices usually has large misfit strain and thus causes unstable thin film structures. In contrast, defect-assisted one- or two-dimensional nanostructures embedded in thin films can sustain large misfit strains without relaxation, which make them suitable for defect engineering in perovskite thin films. Here, we reported the fabrication and characterization of edge-type misfit dislocation-assisted two-dimensional BiMnO_x nanochannels embedded in SrTiO₃/La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃/TbScO₃ perovskite thin films. The nanochannels are epitaxially grown from the surrounding films without noticeable misfit strain. Diode-like current rectification was spatially observed at nanochannels due to the formation of Schottky junctions between BiMnO_x nanochannels and conducting La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ thin films. Such atomically scaled heterostructures constitute more flexible ultimate functional units for nanoscale electronic devices.

Keywords: Schottky junction; defect engineering; dislocation; nanochannel; perovskite thin film.