Heavy fermion thin films: progress and prospects

Abstract

Heavy fermion compounds are a remarkable class of inter-metallic systems, where the presence of several competing interactions leads to the emergence of a plethora of exotic properties. Although these compounds have been extensively studied in the last few decades, their epitaxial synthesis in a thin film form has remained poorly explored. The ability to create these materials in a bottoms-up manner opens up the possibility of both controlling and engineering their properties at the atomic scale, and allows fabrication of artificial heterostructures and superlattices that have no bulk analogues. Furthermore, experimental probes, which are compatible with a thin film geometry but are difficult to make use of with bulk single crystals, can be utilized to gain new insights into their electronic structure. Motivated by the recent advances in thin film technology, this review aims to explore the challenges in thin film growth of heavy fermion systems, presents an overview of the recent progress, and outlines unique opportunities that exist, which are of fundamental scientific importance and could be harnessed for potential technological applications.

Clamping effect on temperature-induced valence transition in epitaxial EuPd2Si2 thin films grown on MgO(001)

“…To our knowledge, up to now no thin-film-specific report regarding this ternary compound exists, leaving several questions regarding the coupling between lattice and electronic degrees of freedom unanswered. Furthermore, for many RE-based compounds the synthesis of single-phase epitaxial thin films has not yet been achieved successfully due to various difficulties during preparation [9]. In this study we report experimental results concerning the growth of EuPd 2 Si 2 epitaxial thin films and their temperaturedependent structural, magnetic, and valence properties.…”

Quantum-well states at the surface of a heavy-fermion superconductor

“…These could exhibit 2DHFs and the associated edge states could incorporate excitations with unique properties such as Majorana fermions following non-Abelian statistics. Furthermore, because the source of quantization is lateral confinement, correlated quantum-confined states can be obtained in nanostructures built on the surface by manipulation of adatoms or by controlling layer growth in thin films 15 , 16 , 39 , 40 . This opens new avenues to generate, isolate and manipulate excitations in unconventional superconductors.…”