Scientific Highlights

Die gleichzeitige Existenz von Magnetismus und Ferroelektrizät in einem Material ist selten. Setzt sich dieser Magnetismus aus mehreren unabhängigen, magnetischen Grundzuständen zusammen, ist das ungewöhnlich. Einer schweizerisch-französischen Zusammenarbeit unter Leitung des Paul Scherrer Instituts ist es gelungen, mehrere magnetische Grundzustände in einem Material zu realisieren und detailliert zu untersuchen.

The physics of the superconducting state in two-dimensional (2D) electron systems is relevant to understanding the high-transition-temperature copper oxide superconductors and for the development of future superconductors based on interface electron systems. But it is not yet understood how fundamental superconducting parameters, such as the spectral density of states, change when these superconducting electron systems are depleted of charge carriers.

Single phase and strained LuMnO₃ thin films are discovered to display coexisting ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic orders. A large moment ferromagnetism (≈1μB), which is absent in bulk samples, is shown to display a magnetic moment distribution that is peaked at the highly strained substrate-film interface. We further show that the strain-induced ferromagnetism and the antiferromagnetic order are coupled via an exchange field, therefore demonstrating strained rare-earth manganite thin films as promising candidate systems for new multifunctional devices.

The electrical conductivity of dense and nanoporous zirconia-based thin films is compared to results obtained on bulk yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) ceramics. Different thin film preparation methods are used in order to vary grain size, grain shape, and porosity of the thin films. In porous films, a rather high conductivity is found at room temperature which decreases with increasing temperature to 120 °C. This conductivity is attributed to proton conduction along physisorbed water (Grotthuss mechanism) at the inner surfaces.

The development of organic electronic requires a non contact digital printing process. The European funded e-LIFT project investigated the possibility of using the Laser Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) technique to address this field of applications. This process has been optimized for the deposition of functional organic and inorganic materials in liquid and solid phase, and a set of polymer dynamic release layer (DRL) has been developed to allow a safe transfer of a large range of thin films.

With ellipsometry, x-ray diffraction, and resistance measurements we investigated the electric-field effect on the confined electrons at the LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ interface. We obtained evidence that the localization of the electrons at negative gate voltage is induced, or at least enhanced, by a polar phase transition in SrTiO₃ which strongly reduces the lattice polarizability and the subsequent screening. In particular, we show that the charge localization and the polar order of SrTiO₃ both develop below ∼50  K and exhibit similar, unipolar hysteresis loops as a function of the gate voltage.

Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a versatile organic light-emitting diode (OLED) pixel deposition process, but has hitherto been applied exclusively to polymeric materials. Here, a modified LIFT process has been used to fabricate small molecule Alq₃ organic light-emitting diodes (SMOLEDs). Small molecule thin films are considerably more mechanically brittle than polymeric thin films, which posed significant challenges for LIFT of these materials.