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The growth and geometric and electronic structures of Cr2O3 layers on the polar ZnO surfaces were characterized to determine how polar substrates can influence the properties of nonpolar films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), reflection high energy electron diffraction, low energy electron diffraction, x-ray diffraction (XRD), and x-ray reflectivity (XRR) were employed to characterize the growth mode, film quality, and interfacial electronic properties. Chromium oxide growth on ZnO (0001¯) and (0001) followed the same trends: two-dimensional growth with initial disorder followed by the formation of epitaxial Cr2O3 (0001). Despite the initial disorder, HRTEM and XRD/XRR measurements on thicker films revealed an abrupt interface with the Cr2O3 lattice extending all the way to the interface. This indicates that above a critical thickness of 10-15 Cr-O3-Cr repeat units, the entire film reorganizes into an ordered structure. It is postulated that the oxygen remained ordered throughout the growth but that the chromium initially filled interstices randomly in the oxygen sublattice, which allowed the film to eventually grow with a well-defined epitaxial relationship with the substrate. The polar interfaces showed a small band offset that decayed with increasing film thickness, suggesting that the compensating charges at the interface may partially migrate to the film surface. No evidence of formal changes in the Cr oxidation state at the interfaces was seen. On the other hand, statistical analyses of UPS valence band spectra revealed an enhanced density of states near the valence band edge for Cr2O3 on ZnO (0001), consistent with stabilization of the positive interface by filling surface electronic states. In contrast, no significant valence band differences were observed between bulk Cr2O3 and thin Cr2O3 layers on ZnO (0001¯), suggesting a different charge compensation mechanism on the negative surface. The potential impact of these findings on the surface properties of chromium oxide thin films is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NdO0.5F0.5BiS2 is a new layered superconductor. We have studied the low-lying electronic structure of the single-crystalline NdO0.5F0.5BiS2 superconductor, whose superconducting transition temperature is 4.83 K, with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The Fermi surface consists of two small electron pockets around the X point and shows little warping along the kz direction. Our results demonstrate the multiband and two-dimensional nature of the electronic structure. The comparison between the photoemission data and the band calculations gives the renormalization factor of ∼1.14, indicating the rather weak electron correlations in this material. Moreover, we found that the actual electron doping level and Fermi surface size are much smaller than what are expected from the nominal composition, which could be largely explained by the bismuth deficiency. The small Fermi pocket size and the weak electron correlations found here put strong constraints on theory, and suggest that the BiS2-based superconductors could be conventional BCS superconductors mediated by the electron-phonon coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nodal-line semimetals have attracted immense interest due to the unique electronic structures such as the linear dispersion and the vanishing density of states as the Fermi energy approaching the nodes. Here, we report temperature-dependent transport and scanning tunneling microscopy (spectroscopy) [STM(S)] measurements on nodal-line semimetal ZrSiSe. Our experimental results and theoretical analyses consistently demonstrate that the temperature induces Lifshitz transitions at 80 and 106 K in ZrSiSe, which results in the transport anomalies at the same temperatures. More strikingly, we observe a V-shaped dip structure around Fermi energy from the STS spectrum at low temperature, which can be attributed to co-effect of the spin-orbit coupling and excitonic instability. Our observations indicate the correlation interaction may play an important role in ZrSiSe, which owns the quasi-two-dimensional electronic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In heavy-fermion compounds, the dual character of f electrons underlies their rich and often exotic properties like fragile heavy quasiparticles, a variety of magnetic orders and unconventional superconductivity. 5f-electron actinide materials provide a rich setting to elucidate the larger and outstanding issue of the competition between magnetic order and Kondo entanglement and, more generally, the interplay among different channels of interactions in correlated electron systems. Here, by using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we present the detailed electronic structure of USb2 and observe two different kinds of nearly flat bands in the antiferromagnetic state of USb2. Polarization-dependent measurements show that these electronic states are derived from 5f orbitals with different characters; in addition, further temperature-dependent measurements reveal that one of them is driven by the Kondo correlations between the 5f electrons and conduction electrons, while the other reflects the dominant role of the magnetic order. Our results on the low-energy electronic excitations of USb2 implicate orbital selectivity as an important new ingredient for the competition between Kondo correlations and magnetic order and, by extension, in the rich landscape of quantum phases for strongly correlated f electron systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]