Conductivity and band alignment of LaCrO_3/SrTiO_3(111) heterostructure

In this work,we investigate the electrical transport property and electronic structure of oxide heterostructure LaCrO_3/SrTiO_3(111).The interface grown under relatively low oxygen partial pressure is found to be metallic with a conducting critical thickness of 11 unit cells of LaCrO_3.This criticality is also observed by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,in which the Ti~(3+) signal intensity at the spectrum edge of the Ti-2p_(3/2) core level increases rapidly when the critical thickness is reached.The variations of the valence band offset and full width at half maximum of the core-level spectrum with LaCrO_3 thickness suggest that the built-in fields exist both in LaCrO_3 and in SrTiO_3.Two possible origins are proposed:the charge transfer from LaCrO_3 and the formation of a quantum well in SrTiO_3.Our results shed light on the understanding of the doping mechanism at the polar/non-polar oxide interface.Moreover,due to the interesting lattice and spin structure of LCO in the(111) direction,our work provides a basis for further exploring the novel topological quantum phenomena in this system.