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Electronic states of a correlated material can be effectively modified by structural variations delivered from a single-crystal substrate. In this letter, we show that the CrN films grown on MgO (001) substrates have a (001) orientation, whereas the CrN films on {\alpha}-Al2O3 (0001) substrates are oriented along (111) direction parallel to the surface normal. Transport properties of CrN films are remarkably different depending on crystallographic orientations. The critical thickness for the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in CrN 111 films is significantly larger than that of CrN 001 films. In contrast to CrN 001 films without apparent defects, scanning transmission electron microscopy results reveal that CrN 111 films exhibit strain-induced structural defects, e. g. the periodic horizontal twinning domains, resulting in an increased electron scattering facilitating an insulating state. Understanding the key parameters that determine the electronic properties of ultrathin conductive layers is highly desirable for future technological applications., Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures

Manipulation of octahedral distortion at atomic length scale is an effective means to tune the physical ground states of functional oxides. Previous work demonstrates that epitaxial strain and film thickness are variable parameters to modify the octahedral rotation and tilt. However, selective control of bonding geometry by structural propagation from adjacent layers is rarely studied. Here we propose a new route to tune the ferromagnetic response in SrRuO3 (SRO) ultrathin layers by oxygen coordination of adjacent SrCuO2 (SCO) layers. The infinite-layered CuO2 in SCO exhibits a structural transformation from "planar-type" to "chain-type" as reducing film thickness. These two orientations dramatically modify the polyhedral connectivity at the interface, thus altering the octahedral distortion of SRO. The local structural variation changes the spin state of Ru and hybridization strength between Ru 4d and O 2p orbitals, leading to a significant change in the magnetoresistance and anomalous Hall resistivity of SRO layers. These findings could launch further investigations into adaptive control of magnetoelectric properties in quantum oxide heterostructures using oxygen coordination.

We study the existence and stability of small-amplitude periodic waves emerging from fold-Hopf equilibria in a system of one reaction-diffusion equation coupled with one ordinary differential equation. This coupled system includes the FitzHugh-Nagumo system, caricature calcium models, consumer-resource models and other models in the real-world applications. Based on the recent results on the averaging theory, we solve periodic solutions in related three-dimensional systems and then prove the existence of periodic waves arising from fold-Hopf bifurcations. Numerical computation in [J. Tsai, W. Zhang, V. Kirk, and J. Sneyd, SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Syst. 11 (2012), 1149--1199] once suggested that the periodic waves from fold-Hopf bifurcations in a caricature calcium model are spectrally unstable, yet without a proof. After analyzing the linearization about periodic waves by the relatively bounded perturbation, we prove the instability of small-amplitude periodic waves through a perturbation of the unstable spectra for the linearizations about the fold-Hopf equilibria. As an application, we prove the existence and stability of small-amplitude periodic waves from fold-Hopf bifurcations in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system with an applied current., Comment: to appear in Journal of Mathematical Physics

Low-dimensional quantum materials that remain strongly ferromagnetic down to mono layer thickness are highly desired for spintronic applications. Although oxide materials are important candidates for next generation of spintronic, ferromagnetism decays severely when the thickness is scaled to the nano meter regime, leading to deterioration of device performance. Here we report a methodology for maintaining strong ferromagnetism in insulating LaCoO3 (LCO) layers down to the thickness of a single unit cell. We find that the magnetic and electronic states of LCO are linked intimately to the structural parameters of adjacent "breathing lattice" SrCuO2 (SCO). As the dimensionality of SCO is reduced, the lattice constant elongates over 10% along the growth direction, leading to a significant distortion of the CoO6 octahedra, and promoting a higher spin state and long-range spin ordering. For atomically thin LCO layers, we observe surprisingly large magnetic moment (0.5 uB/Co) and Curie temperature (75 K), values larger than previously reported for any mono layer oxide. Our results demonstrate a strategy for creating ultra thin ferromagnetic oxides by exploiting atomic hetero interface engineering,confinement-driven structural transformation, and spin-lattice entanglement in strongly correlated materials., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, 1 supporting information with 13 figures

Strain engineering provides the ability to control the ground states and associated phase transition in the epitaxial films. However, the systematic study of intrinsic characters and their strain dependency in transition-metal nitrides remains challenging due to the difficulty in fabricating the stoichiometric and high-quality films. Here we report the observation of electronic state transition in highly crystalline antiferromagnetic CrN films with strain and reduced dimensionality. Shrinking the film thickness to a critical value of ~ 30 unit cells, a profound conductivity reduction accompanied by unexpected volume expansion is observed in CrN films. The electrical conductivity is observed surprisingly when the CrN layer as thin as single unit cell thick, which is far below the critical thickness of most metallic films. We found that the metallicity of an ultrathin CrN film recovers from an insulating behavior upon the removal of as-grown strain by fabrication of first-ever freestanding nitride films. Both first-principles calculations and linear dichroism measurements reveal that the strain-mediated orbital splitting effectively customizes the relatively small bandgap at the Fermi level, leading to exotic phase transition in CrN. The ability to achieve highly conductive nitride ultrathin films by harness strain-controlling over competing phases can be used for utilizing their exceptional characteristics., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures

We study the dynamics of a circadian oscillator model which was proposed by Tyson, Hong, Thron and Novak. This model indicates a molecular mechanism for the circadian rhythm in Drosophila. After giving a detailed study of the equilibria, we further investigate the effects of the rates of mRNA degradation and synthesis. When the rate of mRNA degradation is rather fast, we prove that there are no periodic orbits in this model. When the rate of mRNA degradation is slow enough, this model is transformed into a slow-fast system. Then based on the geometric singular perturbation theory, we prove the existence of canard explosion, relaxation oscillations, homoclinic/heteroclinic orbits and saddle-node bifurcations as the rates of mRNA degradation and synthesis change. Finally, we give the biological interpretation of the obtained results and point out that this model can be transformed into a Li\'enard-like equation, which could be helpful to investigate the dynamics of the general case., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1910.12421