THE GOAL
The goal of this foundry is to demonstrate the ability to synthesize different oxide heterostructures and nanostructures. Pulsed laser deposition assisted with high pressure RHEED has been built in the lab and been used to obtain a layer-by-layer growth mode and high quality epitaxial complex oxide thin films. This core growth technique has been extended to grow ultrathin (few unit cells) films, to control strain in functional oxides and domain structures in ferroic systems, to synthesize complex oxide nanowires, nanocrystals, nanopowders and potential topological defects, such as dislocations and vortex structures. A key ingredient to tune the functionalities in oxide materials is to build up the heterostructures, moreover, vertical nano-heterostructures, interface engineered heterostructures, superlattices and intra-layer control have been also demonstrated. Such a capability creates a huge playground for condense matter research. The foundry is very valuable in expanding the growth capability to control oxide interfaces, which can designed to create spin, charge, and orbital frustrated systems, or protected topological states aimed at the discovery of novel materials with new functionality.