Electronic band structure of (111) SrRuO3 thin films: An angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study

Abstract

We studied the electronic band structure of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) grown (111)-oriented SrRuO3 (SRO) thin films using in situ angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) technique. We observed previously unreported, light bands with a renormalized quasiparticle effective mass of about 0.8me. The electron-phonon coupling underlying this quasiparticle mass renormalization manifests a characteristic kink at the binding energy of 44 meV, which is lower than the values reported for the (001)-oriented SRO films. Furthermore, the quasiparticle spectral intensity at the Fermi level is considerably suppressed, and two prominent peaks appear at binding energies of 0.8 eV and 1.4 eV, respectively. We discuss the possible implications of these observations. Overall, our work demonstrates that high-quality thin films of oxides with large spin-orbit coupling can be grown along the polar (111) orientation by the PLD technique, enabling in situ electronic band structure study. This could allow for characterizing the thickness-dependent evolution of band structure of (111) heterostructures−a prerequisite for exploring possible topological quantum states in the bilayer limit.

Electronic Structure and Magnetism of the Triple-layered Ruthenate Sr$_{4}$Ru$_{3}$O$_{10}$

“…While electronic band structure calculations of Sr 2 RuO 4 [43,44], Sr 3 Ru 2 O 7 [22,23] and SrRuO 3 [45,46] materials have been reported, and also confirmed in detail by angle resolved photoemission (ARPES) experiments [21,22,24,[47][48][49]; it is only recently that the band structure of the Sr 4 Ru 3 O 10 system has been revealed by ARPES [50]. However, electronic structure calculations data of Sr 4 Ru 3 O 10 have not been reported so far; which, by comparing with recent ARPES data, would provide opportunity to understand better the nature of the electronic states and the origins magnetic behavior in Sr 4 Ru 3 O 10 .…”