PhD ceremony Ms. K.G. Rana: Electron transport across complex oxide heterointerfaces

PhD ceremony: Ms. K.G. Rana, 11.00 uur, Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Dissertation: Electron transport across complex oxide heterointerfaces

Promotor(s): prof. T. Banerjee, prof. B.J. van Wees

Faculty: Mathematics and Natural Sciences

This thesis is a first work that demonstrates the application of Ballistic Electron Emission Microscopy (BEEM) to the study of hot-electron transport in complex oxide heterostructures. Key transport parameters as the hot electron attenuation length and its energy dependence are successfully obtained for LSMO. Such a work can be easily extended to the study of hot electron transport in other oxide materials as ruthenates and multiferroics.

An important finding in this thesis is the strong contribution of polaron scattering in addition to the electron-electron scattering to the energy dependence of the attenuation length in such transition metal oxides. From device perspective, there has been much recent interest in devices based on hot-electron transport, such as in photovoltaic effects in multiferroics, or ferroelectric tunneling electro resistance. This approach of using non-equilibrium transport will also be appealing for theorists where it could be used to measure equilibrium self-energy corrections arising from correlations. The unique capability of this technique to map electron transport in buried layers and interfaces is extremely important for designing and understanding transport in oxide .electronic devices and this work is a first demonstration in this direction.