Synthesis and characterization of confined (111) oxides for stabilizing Dice lattices

Artificial oxide heterostructures, when geometrically engineered along the (111) crystal axis, provide a powerful platform for realizing novel quantum states. We report on the experimental synthesis and characterization of electronically active single oxide (111) layers sandwiched with SrTiO₃. This geometry forms an artificial Dice lattice predicted to host a robust Chern insulator phase with a high Chern number (C=+/-2). The strong electron correlations inherent in oxides are expected to drive a large topological gap in this system. Superlattices were synthesized using pulsed laser deposition (PLD), employing specific growth strategies to manage the polar discontinuity of the (111) orientation. This talk will present our recent experimental results, including structural characterization and transport measurements. These initial findings provide a direct search for the predicted topological behaviors and offer critical feedback for realizing the C=2 state. Future work includes soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to directly probe the predicted flat bands in these systems.