Controlling magnetism and spin structures in strongly correlated systems by using electric field is of fundamental importance but challenging. Here, a high-spin ruthenate phase is achieved via a solid ionic chemical junction at SrRuO3/SrTiO3 interface with distinct formation energies and diffusion barriers of oxygen vacancies, analogue to electronic band alignment in semiconductor heterojunction. Oxygen vacancies trapped within this interfacial SrRuO3 reconstruct Ru-4d electronic structure and orbital occupancy, leading to an enhanced magnetic moment. Furthermore, an interfacial magnetic phase can be switched reversibly by electric-field-rectifying oxygen migration in a solid-state ionic gating device, providing a framework for atomic design of functionalities in strongly correlated oxides using a way of solid chemistry.
@article{arxiv.2003.11050,
title = {Electric-field-controllable high-spin SrRuO3 driven by a solid ionic junction},
author = {Jingdi Lu and Liang Si and Xiefei Yao and Chengfeng Tian and Jing Wang and Qinghua Zhang and Zhengxun Lai and Iftikhar Ahmed Malik and Xin Liu and Peiheng Jiang and Kejia Zhu and Youguo Shi and Zhenlin Luo and Lin Gu and Karsten Held and Wenbo Mi and Zhicheng Zhong and Ce-Wen Nan and Jinxing Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.11050},
year = {2020}
}