Preparation and Characterization of SrCoO3 Heterostructures Grown along the (111) Direction

The Topological Insulators (TIs) have attracted much more attention in the research of condensed matter physics due to their promising application potentials [1, 2]. Recent theoretical work has discovered topological insulating behavior in heterostructures of transition-metal oxides (TMOs), and demonstrated that the perovskite-type TMOs films grown along the high-symmetry (111) direction were very likely to realize topological phases [3]. Even that, it is still a great challenge to grow well-suited TMOs films along the (111) direction to display the topological insulating property. In this work, we focus on preparing SrCoO3 thin films on SrTiO3 (111) substrates by UHV pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) equipped with in-situ monitoring by RHEED. After that we will discuss about the structural properties and characterization of SrCoO3 (111) by XRD, XPS and transport measurements, etc. Based on the electron-phonon coupling phenomenon, we will explore the possible topologically non-trivial phase of SrCoO3 (111). Our preliminary results may open new way to explore the topological effects from TMOs heterostuctures. [1]Z. Fang et al. Science 329, 5987 (2010). [2]Q.-K. Xue et al. Science 340,167 (2013). [3]S. Okamoto et al. Nature communications 2, 596 (2011).