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We report the nonvolatile modulation of microwave conductivity in ferroelectric PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3-gated ultrathin LaNiO3/La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 correlated oxide channel visualized by microwave impedance microscopy. Polarization switching is obtained by applying a tip bias above the coercive voltage of the ferroelectric layer. The microwave conductivity of the correlated channel underneath the up- and down-polarized domains has been quantified by finite-element analysis of the tip-sample admittance. At room temperature, a resistance on/off ratio above 100 between the two polarization states is sustained at frequencies up to 1 GHz, which starts to drop at higher frequencies. The frequence-dependence suggests that the conductance modulation originates from ferroelectric field-effect control of carrier density. The modulation is nonvolatile, remaining stable after 6 months of domain writing. Our work is significant for potential applications of oxide-based ferroelectric field-effect transistors in high-frequency nanoelectronics and spintronics. 

Ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) based on epitaxial complex oxide heterostructures are promising building blocks for developing low power nanoelectronics and neuromorphic computing. FTJs consisting of correlated oxide electrodes have distinct advantages in size scaling but only yield moderate electroresistance (ER) at room temperature due to the challenge in imposing asymmetric interfacial screening and large modulation of the tunneling potential profile. Here, we achieve large ER in all-oxide FTJs by paring a correlated metal with a narrow bandgap Mott insulator as electrodes. We fabricate epitaxial FTJs composed of 2.8 and 4 nm PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 tunnel barriers sandwiched between correlated oxides LaNiO3 and Sr3Ir2O7 electrodes. An ER of 6500% has been observed at room temperature, which increases to over 105% at 100 K. The high ER can be attributed to ferroelectric polarization induced metal–insulator transition in interfacial Sr3Ir2O7, which enhances the potential asymmetry for the tunnel barrier. The temperature dependence of tunneling current shows that direct tunneling dominates in the on state, while the off-state conduction transitions from thermally activated behavior at high temperatures to Glazman–Matveev defect-mediated inelastic tunneling at low temperatures. Our study provides a viable material strategy for designing all-oxide FTJs with high ER, facilitating their implementation in nonvolatile memories and energy-efficient computing devices. 

Abstract The superior size and power scaling potential of ferroelectric-gated Mott transistors makes them promising building blocks for developing energy-efficient memory and logic applications in the post-Moore’s Law era. The close to metallic carrier density in the Mott channel, however, imposes the bottleneck for achieving substantial field effect modulation via a solid-state gate. Previous studies have focused on optimizing the thickness, charge mobility, and carrier density of single-layer correlated channels, which have only led to moderate resistance switching at room temperature. Here, we report a record high nonvolatile resistance switching ratio of 38,440% at 300 K in a prototype Mott transistor consisting of a ferroelectric PbZr_0.2Ti_0.8O₃gate and anRNiO₃(R: rare earth)/La_0.67Sr_0.33MnO₃composite channel. The ultrathin La_0.67Sr_0.33MnO₃buffer layer not only tailors the carrier density profile inRNiO₃through interfacial charge transfer, as corroborated by first-principles calculations, but also provides an extended screening layer that reduces the depolarization effect in the ferroelectric gate. Our study points to an effective material strategy for the functional design of complex oxide heterointerfaces that harnesses the competing roles of charge in field effect screening and ferroelectric depolarization effects. 

We report the effect of remote surface optical (RSO) phonon scattering on carrier mobility in monolayer graphene gated by ferroelectric oxide. We fabricate monolayer graphene transistors back-gated by epitaxial (001) Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 films, with field effect mobility up to 23 000 cm2 V−1 s−1 achieved. Switching ferroelectric polarization induces nonvolatile modulation of resistance and quantum Hall effect in graphene at low temperatures. Ellipsometry spectroscopy studies reveal four pairs of optical phonon modes in Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3, from which we extract RSO phonon frequencies. The temperature dependence of resistivity in graphene can be well accounted for by considering the scattering from the intrinsic longitudinal acoustic phonon and the RSO phonon, with the latter dominated by the mode at 35.8 meV. Our study reveals the room temperature mobility limit of ferroelectric-gated graphene transistors imposed by RSO phonon scattering. 

Abstract Complex oxide heterointerfaces and van der Waals heterostructures present two versatile but intrinsically different platforms for exploring emergent quantum phenomena and designing new functionalities. The rich opportunity offered by the synergy between these two classes of materials, however, is yet to be charted. Here, we report an unconventional nonlinear optical filtering effect resulting from the interfacial polar alignment between monolayer MoS₂and a neighboring ferroelectric oxide thin film. The second harmonic generation response at the heterointerface is either substantially enhanced or almost entirely quenched by an underlying ferroelectric domain wall depending on its chirality, and can be further tailored by the polar domains. Unlike the extensively studied coupling mechanisms driven by charge, spin, and lattice, the interfacial tailoring effect is solely mediated by the polar symmetry, as well explained via our density functional theory calculations, pointing to a new material strategy for the functional design of nanoscale reconfigurable optical applications. 

The ability to control and manipulate magnetic anisotropy in the colossal magnetoresistive (CMR) oxide (La,Sr)MnO3 (LSMO) is critical for its implementation in magnetic memory applications. In this work, we employ the planar Hall effect (PHE) as a powerful tool to probe the magnetic anisotropy in LSMO thin films and nanostructures, where the magnetization is too small to be detected by conventional magnetometry techniques. By analyzing the angular- and magnetic field-dependences of the PHE, we deduced an in-plane biaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) energy of ~1.2x10^5 erg/cm^2 in LSMO thin films fully strained on (001) SrTiO3 substrates. Creating nanoscale periodic depth modulation in LSMO establishes a uniaxial anisotropy with substantially enhanced MCA energy density, which is attributed to a high strain gradient sustained in the nanostructure. The energy competition between the biaxial and uniaxial MCA leads to multi-level resistance switching behavior in properly engineered LSMO nanostructures, which can be utilized to design the switching dynamics in magnetic memory devices. Our work points to the critical role of epitaxial strain in determining the MCA in CMR oxides, and provides an effective material strategy for engineering the magnetic properties of LSMO for novel spintronic applications with high thermal stability and high density data storage.