In complex materials observed electronic phases and transitions between them often involves coupling between many degrees of freedom whose entanglement convolutes understanding of the instigating mechanism. Metal-insulator transitions are one such problem where coupling to the structural, orbital, charge, and magnetic order parameters frequently obscures the underlying physics. Here, we demonstrate a way to unravel this conundrum by heterostructuring a prototypical multi-ordered complex oxide NdNiO3 in ultra thin geometry, which preserves the metal-to-insulator transition and bulk-like magnetic order parameter, but entirely suppresses the symmetry lowering and charge order parameter. These findings illustrate the utility of heterointerfaces as a powerful method for removing competing order parameters to gain greater insight into the nature of the transition, here revealing that the magnetic order generates the transition independently, leading to a purely electronic Mott metal-insulator transition.
@article{arxiv.1505.07451,
title = {Selective Interface Control of Order Parameters in Complex Oxides},
author = {D. Meyers and Jian Liu and J. W. Freeland and S. Middey and M. Kareev and J. M. Zuo and Yi-De Chuang and Jong Woo Kim and P. J. Ryan and J. Chakhalian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.07451},
year = {2016}
}