Research

Creating surfaces, interfaces, ultrathin films, and artificial superstructures add the additional twists of ‘man-made’ dimensions, approaching the quantum phenomena of correlated materials with broken symmetry and reduced dimensionality. New physics and new functionality appear, thus offering an opportunity for new discovery and new technological implication. We have every expectation that the phenomena awaiting discovery at the surfaces/interfaces of correlated electron materials will prove as intellectually stimulating as the bulk phenomena in these materials

New Phases at the Surfaces/Interfaces of Transition Metal Oxides

Transition-metal oxides (TMOs) are characterized by physical complexity resulting from the coexistence and competition between different kinds of interactions involving charge, lattice, orbital, and spin degrees of freedom. The relationship between these degrees of freedom is often synergistic and nonlinear. The balance between competing phases is subtle and small changes can create new phenomena. It is both theircomplexity and tunability that make TMOs attractive for fundamental studies and applications. The complexity of TMOs is directly responsible for their tunability.