The nature of the metal-insulator transition in thin films and superlattices of LaNiO₃ only a few unit cells in thickness remains elusive despite tremendous effort. Quantum confinement and epitaxial strain have been evoked as the mechanisms, although other factors such as growth-induced disorder, cation non-stoichiometry, oxygen vacancies, and substrate–film interface quality may also affect the observable properties of ultrathin films. Here we report results obtained for near-ideal LaNiO₃ films with different thicknesses and terminations grown by atomic layer-by-layer laser molecular beam epitaxy on LaAlO₃ substrates. We find that the room-temperature metallic behavior persists until the film thickness is reduced to an unprecedentedly small 1.5 unit cells (NiO₂ termination). Electronic structure measurements using X-ray absorption spectroscopy and first-principles calculation suggest that oxygen vacancies existing in the films also contribute to the metal-insulator transition.

In this paper, we illustrate an approach to discriminate between epitaxial strain and other factors responsible for the decrease of the metal–insulator transition temperature (TP) in thin La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 films grown by pulsed laser deposition. Using this approach, we have estimated the effect of the biaxial strain on TP. Ultrathin films, independent of epitaxial strain, do not show any metal–insulator transition over the full temperature range. This finding confirms the existence of an interface dead layer. The strain-independent decrease in TP, relative to its bulk value, observed for a much wider thickness range (up to about 1000Å) can most likely be attributed to oxygen deficiency.

Kagome materials have emerged as a setting for emergent electronic phenomena that encompass different aspects of symmetry and topology. It is debated whether the XV₆Sn₆ kagome family (where X is a rare-earth element), a recently discovered family of bilayer kagome metals, hosts a topologically non-trivial ground state resulting from the opening of spin–orbit coupling gaps. These states would carry a finite spin Berry curvature, and topological surface states. Here we investigate the spin and electronic structure of the XV₆Sn₆ kagome family. We obtain evidence for a finite spin Berry curvature contribution at the centre of the Brillouin zone, where the nearly flat band detaches from the dispersing Dirac band because of spin–orbit coupling. In addition, the spin Berry curvature is further investigated in the charge density wave regime of ScV₆Sn₆ and it is found to be robust against the onset of the temperature-driven ordered phase. Utilizing the sensitivity of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to the spin and orbital angular momentum, our work unveils the spin Berry curvature of topological kagome metals and helps to define its spectroscopic fingerprint.

We report on the growth and characterization of ultrathin ${\mathrm{YBa}}_2{\mathrm{Cu}}_3{\mathrm{O}}_{7-\delta }$ (YBCO) films on MgO (110) substrates, which exhibit superconducting properties at thicknesses down to 3 nm. YBCO nanowires, with thicknesses down to 10 nm and widths down to 65 nm, have also been successfully fabricated. The nanowires protected by a Au capping layer show superconducting properties close to the as-grown films and critical current densities, which are limited by only vortex dynamics. The 10-nm-thick YBCO nanowires without the Au capping present hysteretic current-voltage characteristics, characterized by a voltage switch which drives the nanowires directly from the superconducting to the normal state. We associate such bistability to the presence of localized normal domains within the superconductor. The presence of the voltage switch in ultrathin YBCO nanostructures, characterized by high sheet resistance values and high critical current values, makes our nanowires very attractive devices to engineer single-photon detectors.

The magnetic and electronic modifications induced at the interfaces in ${\left({\text{SrMnO}}_3\right)}_n/{\left({\text{LaMnO}}_3\right)}_{2n}$ superlattices have been investigated by linear and circular magnetic dichroism in the $\text{Mn}{L}_{2,3}$ x-ray absorption spectra. Together with theoretical calculations, our data demonstrate that the charge redistribution across interfaces favors in-plane ferromagnetic (FM) order and $e_g\left(x^2-y^2\right)$ orbital occupation, in agreement with the average strain. Far from interfaces, inside ${\text{LaMnO}}_3$, electron localization and local strain favor antiferromagnetism (AFM) and $e_g\left(3z^2-r^2\right)$ orbital occupation. For $n=1$ the high density of interfacial planes ultimately leads to dominant FM order forcing the residual AFM phase to be in-plane too, while for $n\ge 5$ the FM layers are separated by AFM regions having out-of-plane spin orientation.