Strain-Modulated Slater-Mott Crossover of Pseudospin-Half Square-Lattice in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>SrIrO</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>SrTiO</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math> Superlattices
Junyi Yang, Lin Hao, D. Meyers, Tamene R. Dasa, Liubin Xu, Lukáš Horák, Padraic Shafer, Elke Arenholz, G. Fabbris, Yongseong Choi, D. Haskel, J. Karapetrova, Jong‐Woo Kim, Philip J. Ryan, Haixuan Xu, Cristian D. Batista, M. P. M. Dean, Jian Liu
Abstract
We report on the epitaxial strain-driven electronic and antiferromagnetic modulations of a pseudospin-half square-lattice realized in superlattices of (SrIrO_{3})_{1}/(SrTiO_{3})_{1}. With increasing compressive strain, we find the low-temperature insulating behavior to be strongly suppressed with a corresponding systematic reduction of both the Néel temperature and the staggered moment. However, despite such a suppression, the system remains weakly insulating above the Néel transition. The emergence of metallicity is observed under large compressive strain but only at temperatures far above the Néel transition. These behaviors are characteristics of the Slater-Mott crossover regime, providing a unique experimental model system of the spin-half Hubbard Hamiltonian with a tunable intermediate coupling strength.