Electronically reconfigurable complex-oxide heterostructure free-standing membranes*

In recent years, LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ interfaces have been used to create a growing family of nanoelectronic devices based on nanoscale control of LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ metal-insulator transition.^[1] The properties of these devices are wide-ranging, but they are restricted by nature to the underlying thick SrTiO₃ substrate. Here we report the synthesis of free-standing LAO/STO membranes which can be directly integrated with other materials via van der Waals stacking. Conductive atomic force microscope lithography is shown to successfully create reversible patterns of nanoscale conducting regions that survive to milli-Kelvin temperatures. The ability to form reconfigurable conducting nanostructures on LAO/STO membranes enables new opportunities to integrate a variety of nanoelectronics with silicon-based architectures and flexible, magnetic, or superconducting materials.

[1] C. Cen et al., Science 323, 1026-1030 (2009).