Erasable and recreatable two-dimensional electron gas at the heterointerface of SrTiO 3 and a water-dissolvable overlayer

• Main Authors: Han, Kun, Hu, Kaige, Li, Xiao, Huang, Ke, Huang, Zhen, Zeng, Shengwei, Qi, Dongchen, Ye, Chen, Yang, Jian, Xu, Huan, Ariando, Ariando, Yi, Jiabao, Lü, Weiming, Yan, Shishen, Wang, Xiao Renshaw
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Electron Gas; Water-dissolvable Overlayer; Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/90321; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/49941
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

While benefiting greatly from electronics, our society also faces a major problem of electronic waste, which has already caused environmental pollution and adverse human health effects. Therefore, recyclability becomes a must-have feature in future electronics. Here, we demonstrate an erasable and recreatable two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), which can be easily created and patterned by depositing a water-dissolvable overlayer of amorphous Sr3Al2O6 (a-SAO) on SrTiO3 (STO) at room temperature. The 2DEG can be repeatedly erased or recreated by depositing the a-SAO or dissolving in water, respectively. Photoluminescence results show that the 2DEG arises from the a-SAO–induced oxygen vacancy. Furthermore, by gradually depleting the 2DEG, a transition of nonlinear to linear Hall effect is observed, demonstrating an unexpected interfacial band structure. The convenience and repeatability in the creation of the water-dissolvable 2DEG with rich physics could potentially contribute to the exploration of next generation electronics, such as environment-friendly or water-soluble electronics.