Melting of Oxygen Vacancy Order at Oxide-Heterostructure Interface

Modifications in oxygen coordination environments in heterostructures consisting of dissimilar oxides often emerge and lead to unusual properties of the constituent materials. Although lots of attention has been paid to slight modifications in the rigid oxygen octahedra of perovskite-based heterointerfaces, revealing the modification behaviors of the oxygen coordination environments in the heterostructures containing oxides with oxygen vacancies have been challenging. Here, we show that a significant modification in the oxygen coordination environments - melting of oxygen vacancy order - is induced at the heterointerface between SrFeO_2.5 (SFO) and DyScO₃ (DSO). When an oxygen-deficient perovskite (brownmillerite structure) SrFeO_2.5 film grows epitaxially on a perovskite DyScO₃ substrate, both FeO₆ octahedra and FeO₄ tetrahedra in the (101)-oriented SrFeO_2.5 thin film connect to ScO₆ octahedra in DyScO₃. As a consequence of accommodating a structural mismatch, the alternately ordered arrangement of oxygen vacancies is significantly disturbed and reconstructed in the 2 nm thick heterointerface region. The stabilized heterointerface structure consists of Fe³⁺ octahedra with an oxygen vacancy disorder. The melting of the oxygen vacancy order, which in bulk SrFeO_2.5 occurs at 1103 K, is induced at the present heterointerface at ambient temperatures.