Final Defense

Kurt Fredrickson, UT-Austin

"First-Principles Studies of Perovskite Thin Films and Heterostructures"

10:00am, RLM 5.114

Abstract: The growth of oxides on semiconductors is of great interest for electronics applications; however, the effects of film growth, atomic adsorption, and strain can have fundamental effects on the properties of the oxides in question. In this dissertation, we use density functional theory to calculate the properties of SrTiO3 and BaTiO3, and discover the effects of the environment on the electronic and atomic properties of these systems. We examine the effects of H adsorption on the SrTiO3 and BaTiO3(001) surfaces, and discover the coverage-dependent onset and retreat of metallic surface states. We calculate the effect of Pt film growth on BaTiO3, and study the effects on the polarization of BaTiO3 for different Pt/BaTiO3 interfaces. We study how strain and interfacial chemistry affect the ferroelectricity of BaTiO3/Ge and BaTiO3/SrTiO3/Ge heterostructures. We also discuss the development of two-dimensional conducting states created in BaTiO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures.