Two-dimensional transport in oxide heterostructures

The entanglement of charge, spin, orbital and even lattice degrees of freedom in transition metal oxides gives rise to a wide spectrum of exotic properties, like high transition temperature superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance. The interfaces between these exotic transition metal oxides offer an even more tantalizing platform for the study not only on the fundamental science, but also on potential applications. The LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) heterostructure is one of the prototypical cases, which exhibits two-dimensional conduction and rich physical properties although both LAO and STO are insulating. In this thesis work, I will present my exploration on the transport properties of such oxide heterostructures synthesized with unit-cell precision by the state-of-the-art pulsed laser deposition (PLD) system. In these experiments, I discussed the mechanism of the insulator-to-metal transition at the heterointerface, confirmed the existence of the Kondo effect at the high carrier density regime and its tunability by gate bias, and explored an alternative way to control the spin-orbit interaction at oxide heterointerfaces. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SPMS)