Mechanical dissipation from charge and spin transitions in oxygen-deficient SrTiO<sub>3</sub> surfaces.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30054477.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-05392-1 and PMC identifier 6063934.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Bodies in relative motion separated by a gap of a few nanometers can experience a tiny friction force. This non-contact dissipation can have various origins and can be successfully measured by a sensitive pendulum atomic force microscope tip oscillating laterally above the surface. Here, we report on the observation of dissipation peaks at selected voltage-dependent tip-surface distances for oxygen-deficient strontium titanate (SrTiO<sub>3</sub>) surface at low temperatures (T = 5 K). The observed dissipation peaks are attributed to tip-induced charge and spin state transitions in quantum-dot-like entities formed by single oxygen vacancies (and clusters thereof, possibly through a collective mechanism) at the SrTiO<sub>3 </sub>surface, which in view of technological and fundamental research relevance of the material opens important avenues for further studies and applications.