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Interface density driven metal-to-insulator transition in nickelate based heterostructures

Lucia Varbaro1, Lukas Korosec1, Chih-Ying Hsu1,2, Duncan T. L. Alexander2, Alexandru B. Georgescu3, and Jean-Marc Triscone1

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Phys. Rev. Materials 9, 116202 – Published 10 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/syz5-9cbc

Abstract

Heterostructures made of alternating metallic layers of Nd0.7La0.3NiO3 and layers displaying a metal-to-insulator transition (such as SmNiO3) have been grown varying the period of the superlattices on top of LaAlO3 substrates. Exploiting the phase boundary cost found between metallic and insulating phases of nickelates, it is shown that a metallic layer can be turned into an insulating one by means of heterostructuring in an intermediate thickness regime in which the single layers retain their metallic behavior.

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Phys. Rev. Materials 9, 116202– Published 10 November, 2025
  • Received 13 June 2025
  • Revised 4 August 2025
  • Accepted 4 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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