In-situ Strain Tunning of Perovskite Nickelate Membranes

Transition-metal oxides exhibit a diverse range of emergent phenomena arising from interactions among spin, charge, lattice, and orbital degrees of freedom. Rare-earth perovskite nickelates have been the subject of significant interest because of the metal-insulator and paramagnetic-antiferromagnetic phase transitions depending on ionic radius of the rare-earth element, as well as epitaxial strain ^[1,2]. Recent advances in strain tuning capabilities based on freestanding oxide membranes have enabled continuous strain control in arbitrary symmetries ^[3,4]. To further improve the strain tuning capability, we have built an in-situ strain-tuning stage inside a cryogenic system with precise stress applied to freestanding membranes, either uniaxially or biaxially. With optical readout of the strain value, we investigate the magneto-transport properties of perovskite nickelate membranes under tensile strain down to 2K.

 

[1] S Catalano et al., Rep. Prog. Phys. 81, 046501 (2018)

[2] S. Middey et al., Annu. Rev. Mater. Res. 46, 305–34 (2016)

[3] S. S. Hong et al., Science 368, 71 (2020)

[4] R. Xu et al., Nat. Commun. 11, 3141 (2020)