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Bulk vs Layer Confined RNiO 3 : Disentangling Lattice and Electronic


Contributions to the Metal-Insulator Transition

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Bulk vs Layer Confined RNiO3: Disentangling
Lattice and Electronic Contributions to the
Metal-Insulator Transition
Alexandru B. Georgescu1 , Oleg E. Peil2 , Ankit S. Disa3 , Antoine Georges1,4,5,6 , and Andrew J. Millis1,7
1
Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, 162 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA; 2 Materials Center Leoben, Leoben, Austria; 3 Max Planck Institute
for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany; 4 Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France; 5 Centre de Physique Théorique Ecole
Polytechnique, CNRS, Universite Paris-Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France; 6 Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, 24 Quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1211
Geneva 4, Switzerland; 7 Columbia University, NYC, NY, United States

This manuscript was compiled on April 9, 2019

In complex oxide materials, changes in electronic properties are of-


ten associated with changes in crystal structure, raising the ques-
tion of the relative roles of the electronic and lattice effects in driving
the metal-insulator transition. This paper presents a combined the-
oretical and experimental analysis of the dependence of the metal-
insulator transition of NdNiO3 on crystal structure, specifically com-
paring properties of bulk materials to one and two layer samples of
NdNiO3 grown between multiple electronically inert NdAlO3 counter-
layers in a superlattice. The comparison amplifies and validates a
theoretical approach developed in previous papers and disentangles

FT
the electronic and lattice contributions. In bulk NdNiO3 the correla-
tions are not strong enough to drive a metal-insulator transition by
themselves: a lattice distortion is required. Ultra-thin films exhibit
two additional electronic effects and one lattice-related effect. The
electronic effects are quantum confinement, leading to dimensional
reduction of the electronic Hamiltonian, and an increase in electronic
RA
bandwidth due to counterlayer induced bond angle changes. We find Fig. 1. : Heterostructuring NdNiO3 with NdAlO3 : structural distortions are repre-
that the confinement effect is much more important. The lattice effect sented as motion (not to scale) of oxygen ions (red circles) away from center of Ni-Ni
is an increase in stiffness due to the cost of propagation of the lattice and Ni-Al bonds; note that the distortions do not propagate significantly into the Al
disproportionation into the confining material. layers are are of reduced amplitudes along the Ni-Al bonds. The different colors of
the Ni atoms represent the electronic disproportionation. The kinetic energy of the Ni
transition metal oxide | metal-insulator transition | heterostructure | eg electrons is reduced by confinement, as electrons are not allowed to hop through
the insulating NAO layers (|t0 |«|t‹ |,|tÎ |), while |tÎ | < |t‹ | due to propagation of bond
epitaxial constraint | structural modulation | layer confinement
angles from NdAlO3 .
D

Introduction:. Metal insulator transitions (MIT) in correlated


electron materials typically involve changes in both the elec-
lattice distortion Q, both defined more precisely below. The
tronic and atomic structure. The relative importance of the
two effects has been the subject of extensive discussion(1–8).
In this paper, using a recently developed theoretical approach
(3, 8), we argue that comparison of few-layer and bulk materi- Significance Statement
als yields considerable insight into the relative importance of
Our combined theoretical and experimental study of bulk and
electronic and lattice contributions, essentially because these
heterostructured forms of a correlated electron material leads
are affected by heterostructuring in opposite ways. Motivated
to new insights into the metal-insulator transition. Comparison
by recent experimental (9–25) and theoretical (8, 13, 26–36)
of single layer, bilayer and very thick samples validates a com-
results, we focus here on the rare earth nickelate family of
bined ab-initio/many-body theoretical approach and enables
materials. The concepts, formalism and findings are applicable
a clear disentangling of electronic and lattice contributions to
to wide classes of materials.
the transition. Analysis of the lattice relaxations associated
The rare earth nickelates have chemical formula RNiO3 (R
with the metal-insulator transition highlights the importance of
is a rare earth metal of the lanthanide rare earth series). In
the elastic properties of and propagation of distortions into the
bulk, at high T, they are metallic and form an orthorhombic
electronically inert counterlayer, defining a new control parame-
Pbnm structure (except for R=La for which the structure is
ter for tuning electronic properties. Counterlayer induced bond
rhombohedral) that is a distorted ABO3 cubic perovskite in
angle changes and electronic confinement provide separate
which the Ni ions are equivalent up to a rotation and trans-
tuning parameters, with bond angle changes found to be a
lation. For all R except for La, the bulk materials undergo a
much less effective tuning parameter.
metal to insulator transition (MIT) as T is decreased. The
transition is first order and the low T phase has a P21 /n
structure with two fundamentally inequivalent Ni sites charac-
terized by an electronic charge disproportionation N and a 2
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ageorgescuflatirioninstitute.org

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.XXXXXXXXXX PNAS | April 9, 2019 | vol. XXX | no. XX | 1–6


relative roles of the two has been the subject of debate. The from DFT+U structural relaxations is shown in Fig. 2. The
issue has typically been addressed by calculations (typically essential point is that the lattice distortion propagates a short
performed at fixed crystal structure) and experiments on a distance into the counter-layer, and the stiffness to this in-
specific material or on members of a family of materials, and tertwined layer-counterlayer distortion is larger than for the
has not been resolved. Similar issues arise in many other nickelate material alone.
transition metal oxide materials. We represent the bond disproportionation mode and its
Recent experiments (9) report that in NdNiO3 /NdAlO3 propagation in Fig 2 for a particular Q for the bilayer. The
(NNO/NAO) superlattices in which one or two monolayers structural disproportionation is inhomogeneous: the in-plane
of NNO are separated by many layers of the wide-gap insu- NiO6 bonds show disproportionation of about the same ampli-
lator NAO, the MIT occurs at a much higher temperature tude we would expect in the bulk. The interfacial bonds are
than in the bulk, while the X-ray signatures of the lattice less disproportionated as the driving force on the apical oxygen
distortion are much less pronounced in the superlattices than atom comes only from the Ni, the disproportionation is lower.
in bulk. These experiments suggest that heterostructuring We can then estimate the relative stiffness of the Al-O bond
affects electronic and lattice properties differently and thus relative to the Ni-O bonds from the relative displacements in
that a comparative examination of the two material forms a simple elastic spring model, to approximately 88% of the the
can help disentangle the relative importance of electronic and stiffness of the Ni-O bonds. However, the additional energy
lattice contributions to the metal-insulator transition. In this cost per octahedron due to propagation in the NAO (or, equiv-
paper we theoretically investigate the differences between bulk alently, the lack of an Al driving force on the Oxygen) leads to
NdNiO3 and superlattice NdNiO3 /NdAlO3 materials using a higher effective stiffness per octahedron. Finally, the out-of-
a theoretical approach previously applied to bulk nickelates plane bonds between nickelate layers in the bilayer structure
(5, 8, 27, 29, 31–33, 37–39) and to ruthenates (3). disproportionate even more than the in-plane bonds, likely to
In figure 1 we represent the main phenomenology that we compensate for the decreased interfacial disproportionation.
disentangle in this paper, as exemplified on the bilayer NNO. The analysis is almost identical for the monolayer, with the
Namely, the structural distortions in the material become exception of the inter-layer bond which does not exist.
inhomogenous due to the presence of the NdAlO3 counterlayer

FT
and the absence of a driving force on the interfacial oxygen
from the aluminum atom. In our effective model, this leads to
an increased effective stiffnes of the bond disproportionation
mode as the same force from the nickel atoms leads to a lower
average oxygen displacement. On the electronic structure,
the layer confinement of the material leads to suppressed
RA
hopping along the z direction, while the propagation of bond
angles from NAO to NNO leads to a small increase of the
Ni-Ni hopping in-plane as compared to the out-of-plane Ni-Ni
hopping in the bilayer.

Energy. Central to our discussion is an expression for the en-


ergy difference E between the insulating and metallic phases
D

as a function of lattice distortion Q and charge disproportion-


ation N (3, 8):

kQ2 1
E(Q, N) = ≠ gQ N + Eel ( N ) [1]
2 2
Fig. 2. Left: Schematic of bulk NNO and NAO (ignoring octahedral rotations).
The first term is the elastic energy cost of establishing the Right: Schematic of the bond disproportionation modes in the NNO bilayer and its
lattice distortion, the middle term is the leading symmetry propagation into nearby NAO layers, projected on the Ni-Ni and Ni-Al direction, as
allowed coupling between the structural and electronic order discussed in the main text for a bilayer structure with the average Q=0.078 Å- similar
to the Q of the experimental bulk low T structure.
parameters, and the final term is the energy associated with
the electronic transition. The three control parameters are
thus k, g and the combination of interaction parameters and The parameter g that relates the bond disproportionation
bandwidths that determines Eel ( N ). A detailed description Q to the on-site field difference between the two inequivalent
of the process by which we fix the control parameters is given Ni atoms ( S = gQ) is obtained from its value as obtained
in the Appendix B; here we summarize the findings and give from DFT alone g DF T as described in the supplement, and
physical interpretations. adjusted for double counting as g = g DF T (1 + (U ≠ 53 J)‰0 )
In a previous work on bulk perovskites, the structural stiff- with ‰0 = ˆˆ NS
the electronic susceptibility as extracted from
ness parameter k was found to vary only slightly as the rare DFT. The value of g DF T is relatively constant between the
earth ion was changed (8). We find that heterostructuring bulk and heterostructured materials, and has been previously
has a stronger effect, with k increasing from k=15.86eV/Å2 shown to be constant throughout the RNiO3 family. However,
for bulk NNO, to 17.71eV/Å2 for the bilayer structure and as ‰0 is related to the inverse of the bandwidth, the ratio of
20.18eV/Å2 for the monolayer. The fundamental difference the g across the materials changes slightly depending on the
between bulk and layered systems appears at the interface be- choice of U,J.
tween the two components of the heterostructure. A schematic Finally, N is obtained from dynamical mean field cal-
of the bond disproportionation mode in the bilayer as obtained culations that require as input values of on-site interaction

2 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.XXXXXXXXXX Georgescu et al.


parameters U and J as well as band structure information previous work (40), the bond angles from the NAO propagate
obtained by Wannier function fits to density functional theory into the NNO leading to straighter in-plane bond angles and
band structures. In Figure 3 we plot the metal-insulator phase slightly higher in-plane bandwidths in the heterostructures
diagram calculated at Q = 0 for the different materials on the than for bulk NNO. This leads to a x2 -y2 bandwidth of 2.72eV
plane of interaction parameters U and J. , i.e. determined by for the monolayer and 2.68eV for the bilayer. Previous work
Eel ( N ) exclusively. We also plot a dashed line corresponding has shown that one can use the bond angles of the counterlayers
to the MIT transition for the experimental bulk low tempera- as a control parameter to tune the metal-insulator transition
ture, insulating structure, calculated as in Ref. (33), to show temperature in nickelate heterostructures (40–42).
the effect of the lattice distortion. We choose parameters U,J For a lower number of layers as in this work however, the
in the range in which the bulk undisproportionated material electronic confinement dominates and leads to an increased
is metallic. We note that the resulting J needed to obtain an tendency to disproportionate. A third effect of heterostruc-
insulating state is significantly higher than in a more realistic turing on the electronic structure is that of the crystal-field
calculation involving U,J and an inter-site Hartree term V(32), splitting induced by the inequivalence of the bonds and the
however for simplicity and to avoid overfitting multiple param- relative ionicity of the material. Finally, within the eg Wannier
eters we work within a U, J model as in previous work (33). picture, the monolayer also shows a crystal field splitting of
Consistent with previous work we find insulating solutions for ‘¯x2 ≠y2 ≠ ‘¯3z2 ≠r2 = 0.14eV in DFT. We’ve performed calcu-
values U,J that are to the right of U-3J<0 (which corresponds lations for the monolayer with the crystal-field splitting set
to spontaneous electronic disproportionation in the atomic to 0 for U=2.1eV and found that the critical J for the MIT
limit), insulating solutions, in the absence of any structural transition line is the same as with the crystal-field splitting
disproportionation. The transitions as a function of U and J set to the DFT relaxed value, within an accuracy of J=0.01eV,
are strongly first order. We find that spontaneous dispropor- thus showing a negligible effect.
tionation ( N ”= 0) is achieved for a slightly smaller critical J
for a given U in the monolayer and the bilayer than in the bulk.
Despite minor differences in bandwidth, the phase diagrams for
the monolayer and bilayer are nearly identical. An additional

‰bulk
0 0 = 1.25/eV , ‰monolayer
0
FT
way to estimate the effect of the change in bandwidth is by
comparing the static electronic response to an on-site field in
our eg tight-binding model, ‰0 as defined previously. We get
= 1.16/eV , ‰bilayer = 1.39/eV .
RA
D

Fig. 3. Solid lines: boundaries of region of spontaneous electronic disproportionation


in the (U,J) plane for DFT-relaxed bulk, bilayer and monolayer NNO in the absence of
structural distortion. Insulating phases are to the right of the lines shown. The dotted
line to the left shows the Metal-Insulator transition line for the bulk experimental Low
T disproportionated structure calculated as in Ref (33). The stars correspond to the
points at which the constructions in Fig. 5 are plotted.

The dominant effect of the layering in the case of the Fig. 4. Projected density of states of low-energy eg Wannier bands for GGA-relaxed
structures for bulk (top), bilayer (middle) and monolayer (bottom) structures. Dotted
heterostructures is electronic confinement: electron hopping horizontal lines show approximate cutoff for determining bandwidths mentioned in
is confined to be in-plane only for the NNO monolayer, and main text. Confinement greatly reduces the bandwidth of the 3z2 -r2 orbital, however
confined between the two layers for the bilayer. While the bulk the bond angle propagation leads to a slightly wider bandwidth of the x2 -y2 orbital.
orbitals have a bandwidth of 2.6eV, the 3z2 -r2 orbital for the
monolayer has a bandwidth of 1.85eV and for the bilayer 2.15eV. We have then found three main effects of heterostructuring
Two other, more minor effects appear as well. Similar to on the electronic structure. The effect of layer confinement

Georgescu et al. PNAS | April 9, 2019 | vol. XXX | no. XX | 3


strongly lowers the kinetic energy of the electrons and favors an
insulating state, with its effect primarily on the 3z2 -r2 orbital.
The bond angle propagation leads to a small effect in the
opposite direction, primarily on the x2 -y2 band. Finally, the
crystal field splitting is only significant in the monolayer,
however it does not affect the electronic transition.

Equilibrium bond and electronic disproportionation from to-


tal energy model. We now turn to determining equlibrium
points in the energy functional from equation 1. Stationarity
of E with respect to variations in N and Q implies the
two equilibrium conditions:
1
0 = kQ ≠ g N [2]
2
and:
1 ˆEel ( N )
0 = ≠ gQ + [3]
2 ˆ N
Equation 2 gives Q as a function of N and requires determin-
ing k and g which we obtain from density functional theory
(DFT) calculations as described in the Methods section and
the Appendix. However, its meaning is very simple: for a
particular value of the electronic disproportionation N one
can obtain the equilibirum disproportionation of the oxygen
atoms as a result of the resulting electrostatic forces. Equation

2k
Q=
FT
3 gives N as a function of Q, as obtained via the density
functional plus dynamical mean field theory (DFT+DMFT)
method.
Combining the two, we have an equation of state:

N [Q] [4] Fig. 5. N versus bond disproportionation Q within DFT+DMFT for bulk, bilayer
RA
g and monolayer structures as well as Q versus N lines from the total energy model
calculation in different areas of the phase space as determined by equation 2 and
The N (Q) relation is shown in Figure 5 as large symbols equation 3 via DFT+DMFT as described in the main text. The thick circles mark the
connected by lines for U = 2.1eV and three J values. For intersections that respect the equation of state 4. The panels marked with A,B,C
the smallest J value neither the bulk nor the superlattice correspond to the points marked with stars in the phase diagram in Fig. 3
materials show a spontaneous disproportionation at Q = 0;
for small Q there is a regime in which the disproportionation
is linear in Q and the solution remains metallic. Above a is nearly constant in the insulating phase N ¥ Ninsulating , Q
is then set by optimizing the structure Q[ N ] in equation [4] as
D

particular Q there is a very rapid crossover to an insulating


approximately Q ¥ . This allows the seemingly
g Ninsulating
solution with a N which is large and only weakly dependent 2k
on Q. In the insulating regime the monolayer has a larger paradoxical solutions with the amplitude of Q and N showing
disproportionation than the bulk, with the bilayer in between. opposite trends between the bulk and heterostructure. If
For an intermediate J, the monolayer and bilayer exhibit a we assume that the experimentally obtained metal-insulator
spontaneous disproportionation at Q = 0 but the bulk material transition temperature is more strongly correlated to N than
exhibits a Q-driven first order transition. At the larger J all Q, while the XAS spectra splitting is more strongly correlated
three systems spontaneously distort at Q = 0. with Q, we can thus explain the seemingly paradoxical results
Also shown in Figure 5 are straight lines corresponding in previous work (9).
to the Q( N ) relation from equation 2. The intersection One of the signatures associated with the bond dispropor-
of these lines with the DMFT N (Q) curves defines the tionated phase of the RNO nickelates is an increased peak-
actual values of N and Q. We see from the relative positions prepeak splitting of the XAS Ni L3 edge, which in the mono-
of the intersections that Qmonolayer < Qbilayer < Qbulk and layer and bilayer were found to be in between the values of the
Nmonolayer > Nbilayer > Nbulk . From an electronic point bulk disproportionated and undisproportionated structures
of view the monolayer and bilayer are more disproportionated throughout the insulating temperature range scanned. Con-
( N is larger) as N does not depend strongly on Q, however sistent with this result, we find that the predicted value of
the higher stiffness of the heterostructures leads to a lower Q. the structural disproportionation of the monolayer is lower
Further, as shown in the middle figure in 2, there is a range than the bulk, with the bilayer in between the two. Further,
of U,J for which the heterostructures will stay insulating even XAS integration of the monolayer in-plane and out-of-plane
at a very small Q while the bulk becomes metallic. Ni L3 edge has found an orbital polarization of 8% favoring
The relative roles of the lattice and electronic structure the 3z2 -r2 orbital. Within our insulating solutions we find that
are easily disentangled from the above: while the electronic orbital polarization is strongly suppressed ( <2%) however
disproportionation has a first order transition, presenting a we consistently find that the long bond site has an orbital
very slowly varying N in the insulating phase. Assuming N polarization of 5-8% in a direction consistent with experiment,

4 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.XXXXXXXXXX Georgescu et al.


while the LB site is orbitally polarized of about the same mag- on the two inequivalent Ni atoms:
nitude but in the opposite direction. This suggests that the
XAS spectra may sample primarily the LB, however further N = NHF ≠ NLF [6]
theoretical and experimental work is needed.
with HF = Higher Filling and LF=Lower Filling. When there
is structural disproportionation, HF corresponds to LB and
Conclusion and Outlook. Using a combination of
LF corresponds to SB.
DFT+DMFT and many-body theory we have eluci-
dated the relative importance of lattice and electronic effects The parameter g in equation 2 is defined in terms of
in heterostructured materials. We have found that the higher the on-site energy difference S = gQ entering our DMFT
lattice energy cost in the heterostructured materials decreases calculations. In our one-shot DMFT, g is corrected from
the structural signatures of the symmetry-broken phase within the DFT value by a double counting term (8, 32), so g =
the correlated material going through an MIT but that the g DF T (1 + (U ≠ 53 J)‰0 ).
distortion associated with it can propagate into the epitaxial The Wannier fits define a low energy tight binding model to
layer. We have found that, as the effect of interactions is which we add standard Slater-Kanamori interactions and solve
increased in a layer-confined structure, electronic dispropor- using dynamical mean field theory (using the triqs library(50),
tionation can be higher despite lower structural distortions in ct-hyb solver(51) and dfttools (52) interface) with the two
a heterostructure. Through comparison with experiment(9), inequivalent Ni treated as different embedded atoms. Note
our study suggests that the electronic disproportionation is that in the DMFT theory, the calculated lattice distortion
more likely to be correlated to the metal insulator transition enters as a site-dependent energy difference gQ.
temperature than the structural disproportionation, which is The parameter k is the stiffness to lattice distortions at
suppressed by the higher structural stiffness of the material. fixed N . We argue, following (3, 8) that since the stiffness
At the same time, our work suggests that the structural comes from the full electronic structure at fixed N , the fron-
disproportionation is more strongly connected to the XAS tier orbitals play a relatively minor role and for the purpose
splitting observed experimentally, likely via the induced of calculating k may be treated at the DFT level. We there-
on-site electrostatic potential difference. fore obtain k from the dependence of the DFT energy on Q

FT
These general results can be used both to understand other
similar heterostructures (for example LaNiO3 /LaAlO3 ) as well
as to design new materials. Our analysis of the bond dispro-
portionation mode on the interfacial structure in this class
of materials as well as in related classes of materials (vana-
dates, manganites etc) can be studied both theoretically and
ˆEDF T
ˆQ
= cQ. However in the DFT calculations N is relaxed
at each Q . Referring to equation 2 we have on the DFT level
(and noting the stationarity with respect to N ):

cQ =
ˆEDF T
ˆQ
1
= kQ ≠ g DF T
2
N (Q) [7]
RA
experimentally. The combination of bond angles, confinement The parameter g DF T is defined in terms of the average on
and relative structural stiffness can be used to fine tune metal- site energy DF
S
T
obtained from our Wannier fits to DFT band
insulator transition temperatures. Based on the methodology DF T
structures as g DF T = SQ and N (Q) is obtained from the
in this work and previous work (3, 8), future work involving occupancy difference of the Wannier orbitals and is found to be
DFT+DMFT, DFT+U studies and model calculations, can linear in Q, N = ‰0 g DF T Q. This relation defines the on-site
address the relative roles of lattice and electronic dispropor- susceptibility ‰0 . g DF T can be read off from the on-site energy
tionation. difference and is nearly identical for all three materials, namely
D

2.89ev/Å for bulk and 2.972ev/Å for the bilayer and 2.962ev/Å
Methods. For our calculations, we use structures obtained from
for the monolayer. This means that a similar movement of
fully relaxed DFT+U calculations (43) and impose 0% strain the ions leads to a similar change of electrostatic potential,
relative to the theoretical bulk NNO lattice constant on the which is something we would expect as the local environment
heterostructures. We use Quantum Espresso, ultrasoft pseu- is similar. The static electronic response however is different,
dopotentials, either from the GBRV or generated using the with ‰0 = 1.16eV ≠1 for bulk, ‰0 = 1.25eV ≠1 for bilayer and
Vanderbilt ultrasoft pseudopotential generator as described in ‰0 = 1.39eV ≠1 for the monolayer, with a larger response for
previous work (43–47) and benchmark our results against ex- the materials with lower bandwidth.
perimental bulk structures. The disproportionated structures
have two inequivalent Ni sites, one with relatively long Ni-O
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, Jean-
bonds (’LB’) and one with relatively short Ni-O bonds (’SB’). Marc Triscone, Hugo U.R. Strand, Manuel Zingl, Alexander Hampel
We define the structural order Q as: and Claude Ederer for helpful conversations and Nick Carriero and
Úq the Scientific Computing Core division of the Flatiron Institute
(i) (i) for invaluable technical assistance. The Flatiron Institute is a
(lLB ≠ lSB )2
Q= i
[5] division of the Simons Foundation. AG acknowledges the support
6 of the European Research Council (ERC-319286-QMAC). OEP
acknowledges funding from Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft (FFG)
where l(i) are the lengths of the Ni-O bonds. COMET program IC-MPPE (project No 859480)
For each structure we then perform a self consistent DFT
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6 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.XXXXXXXXXX Georgescu et al.


1

2 Supplementary Information for


3 Bulk vs Layer Confined RNiO3 : Disentangling Lattice and Electronic Contributions to the
4 Metal-Insulator Transition

5 Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis

6 Alexandru B. Georgescu.
7 E-mail: ageorgescu@flatironinstitute.org

8 This PDF file includes:


9 Supplementary text
10 Figs. S1 to S5
11 References for SI reference citations

Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis 1 of 11


12 Supporting Information Text
13 Appendix A - Technical Details
14 DFT. We use the Quantum Espresso (1) software package for our DFT calculations, Wannier90(2) to generate the extended
15 Wannier eg orbitals, and the TRIQS software package(3) for the DMFT calculations with its various applications: DFTTools
16 (4) for the interface with Wannier90 and the CT-HYB DMFT solver(5) to solve the DMFT equations using the Hybridization
17 expansion impurity solver (6). We use ultrasoft pseudopotentials (7) and the PBE (8) version of the GGA exchange-correlation
18 functional formalism. To simulate the bulk material, we used a 20 atom c(2x2)x2 unit cell, relaxed starting from the experimental
19 structure; for the m=1 superlattice we used 1 layer of NNO and 3 layers of NAO, while for m=2 we used 2 layers of each material,
20 making sure that the total number of layers is even in order to allow the octahedra to relax. For the bulk undisproportionated
21 calculation, we find that our high-temperature relaxed structure within GGA has a bandwidth that is only slightly smaller
22 than the experimental high temperature structure. In the phase diagram in figure 2, this leads to a small shift to the left in the
23 critical J for a given U of at most 0.05eV. Of the available functionals we have tried however (LDA, PBE and PBEsol), we find
24 that relaxations using GGA in the PBE formalism provide a bandwidth that is very close to the one using the experimental
25 high temperature structure as well as a phase diagram that is closer to the one obtained by using said structure. We also
26 find that the phase diagram difference between the undisproportionated structures is robust with respect to changing the
27 functional used in order to obtain the relaxed structures. For the initial DFT relaxations without structural disproportionation,
28 we found a k-point mesh of 5x5x4 for the 20 atom bulk unit cell or 5x5x4 for the heterostructures (equivalent to 7x7x8 and
29 7x7x12) per formula unit are sufficient to generate quality structures. For consistency with the DFT+U results, we also
30 performed higher k-point calculations but found they do not affect results. For the various DFT+U relaxations involving
31 structural disproportionation, we impose ferromagnetic order. The k-point mesh has to be higher to differentiate between the
32 various possible local minima. Thus, for the 20 atom bulk is 7x7x5, while for the 40 atom heterostructures it is 7x7x4 (roughly
33 equivalent to a 10x10x10 k-mesh per formula unit) in order to have a 1meV accuracy in the total energies of the relaxed
34 structures, however we have found that structures obtained using 5x5x2 and 7x7x3 k-point grids give nearly identical structural
35 results. For all calculations, the wavefunction energy cutoff is 35 Ry, and the density cutoff is 280Ry. A Marzari-Vanderbilt
36 smearing of 0.027 eV is used for the electron occupation function for all calculations. The energy convergence threshold for
37 relaxations is 10≠9 eV and the force covergence threshold is 10≠4 a.u., the electronic energy convergence threshold within the
38 electronic self-consistency loop is 10≠12 eV.
39 To extract the tight-binding parameters for DMFT calculations, we obtain the antibonding eg orbitals as a postprocessing
40 step using Wannier90 within the Maximally Localized Wannier Function framework.

41 DFT+U. For the DFT+U calculations, we performed calculations in the ferromagnetic phase, as our unit cells are not large
42 enough to reproduce the full experimentally determined magnetic structure in the bulk (with vector q=(1/4,1/4,1/4)) or bilayer
43 (q=(1/4,1/4,0) while the magnetic structure in the monolayer is not known but with ferromagnetism and a q=(1/4,1/4,0) vector
44 excluded. We use the FM state as a way to break symmetry leading to bond disproportionation and an alternating S=1, S=0
45 state, as more important in the physics of the final structure than the exact magnetic order. A Hund J is included implicitly
46 within spin-polarized DFT, however within the version of Quantum Espresso used for these calculations, only the effective
47 Dudarev Uef f = (U ≠ 2J) scheme is available, not allowing us to control U, J separately. For the two inequivalent Ni sites, as a
48 proxy for charge disproportionation, we use the difference in local magnetic moment. We find that the total magnetization
49 for the supercell is always equal to one Bohr magneton times the number of Nickel sites, as we would expect. However, the
50 projected magnetic moment on the Löwdin orbitals does not add up to this total magnetization, as the Löwdin orbitals are not
51 sufficient to describe the eg valence states. However, making the assumption that the Löwdin magnetic moment is directly
52 proportional to the magnetic moment per site, we can then write mN i ¥ mLowdin≠total ú 2µB/mtotal where mLowdin≠total is
53 the total magnetization per pair of Ni sites: this is the M plotted in Appendix C.

DFT+DMFT. The Slater-Kanamori Hamiltonian solved by DMFT using the tight binding model extracted from the Wannier
functions has the form on each lattice site:
ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ
ĤU = U n̂mø n̂m¿ + (U ≠ 2J) n̂mø n̂mÕ ¿ + (U ≠ 3J) n̂m‡ n̂mÕ ‡ ≠ J c†mø cm¿ c†mÕ ¿ cmÕ ø
m m”=mÕ m<mÕ ,‡ m”=mÕ
ÿ
+J c† mø c†m¿ cmÕ ¿ cmÕ ø [1]
m”=mÕ

54 In the DFTTools interface between DFT and DMFT we use a k-mesh of 14x14x14 for the bulk material, and a k-mesh of
55 12x12x6 for the heterostructure to obtain quality local density of states. The DMFT calculations in this paper are performed
56 in a single-shot formalism, i.e. the new density is not updated into the DFT loop. Most DMFT calculations in this paper,
57 unless mentioned otherwise, are done at an inverse temperature — = 40eV ≠1 , equivalent to a temperature of 290K. Most
58 DMFT calculations are run for 15 steps using 107 QMC cycles. Calculations that require higher precision are ran for 35
59 steps, the first 30 using around 107 QMC cycles, and the final 5 using 3 ◊ 108 cycles. To compare with previous literature,
60 we’ve also performed density-density only calculations to benchmark our calculations. We find that using the Slater-Kanamori
61 Hamiltonian shifts the metal-insulator phase boundary to slightly higher values of J given a particular U (¥ 0.2eV ).

2 of 11 Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis


62 Appendix B - Model Parameter Extraction. In order to extract the relevant parameters we need, we use the structures generated
63 within DFT+U. We need to extract the following: g DF T = ˆˆQS , ‰0 = ˆˆ N S
, ⁄ = g DF T ‰0 and finally the stiffness k, which can
64 then be extracted by doing DFT calculations on said structures. We then get: EDF T (Q) = ( k2 ≠ 14 (g DF T )2 ‰0 )Q2 = 2c Q2 with c,
65 g, ‰0 constants we extract from the structures we generated as a function of Q. In order to benchmark this method as compared
66 to explicitly imposing a Q, we compared our results on the bulk material with previous work (9) in which multiple structures
67 were generated by modulating the bond disproportionation Q alone, and find that our results are consistent. We also note
68 that while using bulk structures obtained through GGA relaxation does lead to slightly lower bandwidths than those obtained
69 using the experimental structure, this only affects the results by shifting all the phase diagrams to lower J for a given U by
DF T
about 0.05eV as compared to the experimental structure. As the stiffness k and the static response functions g DF T =
ˆ S
70
ˆQ
71 and ‰0 = ˆ N DF T
ˆ DF T do not depend on the bandwidth by more than a fraction of a percent within our calculations, and the
S
72 bond angles of the disproportionated structures remains the same up to within < 1 degree within our relaxed spin-polarized
73 calculations, we can simulate a large number of disproportionated structures with varying Q and assuming that the DFT
74 Hamiltonian would look like the one corresponding to the undisproportionated, nonmagnetic structure plus an on-site energy
75 difference DFS
T
= g DF T Q. The spin-polarized relaxed structures have bond angles that are slightly more bent than those in
76 the non-magnetic calculations, however as was shown in (9), neither k nor g depend on the bandwidth; we do expect a slightly
77 larger ‰0 in the structures obtained using spin-polarized DFT+U by about 3-5% due to the slightly reduced bandwidth.

Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis 3 of 11


Fig. S1. Plot of energy per 2 formula units of NNO for the different structures for different Q, using structures obtained from DFT+U calculations. The energy and Q2 are
plotted relative to the energy of the smallest Q that are included in the plot.

4 of 11 Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis


Fig. S2. Fit to obtain the static electronic response for the three materials, ‰0

Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis 5 of 11


Fig. S3. Fit to obtain the linear coupling coefficient within DFT, gDF T

6 of 11 Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis


78 Appendix C - DFT+U Bulk and Heterostructure Results. Further supporting the picture of stronger electronic disproportionation
79 in the heterostructures as a driving mechanism, we present results for the bulk, bilayer and monolayer structures as obtained
80 by DFT+U using spin-polarized calculations in the FM state and full relaxations in Figure S4, with further details at the
81 end of Appendix C. We find that, for small U, the heterostructures have a critical U under which the lattice stiffness is too
82 strong to allow disproportionation. As expected, the critical U at which the monolayer disproportionates is higher than for the
83 bilayer. Consistent with the DFT+DMFT results, however, once electronic disproportionation is allowed the monolayer is more
84 electronically disproportionated than the bulk, with a similar result for the bilayer with the exception of U=1eV. Q are very
85 similar for all three structures, with the exception of large U for which both the bulk and bilayer structural disproportionation
86 stop increasing, while the monolayer disproportionation increases past that of both.

Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis 7 of 11


87 Appendix D - Experimental Hole Determination. Experimental values of the Ni eg hole ratio were extracted from x-ray linear
88 dichroism (XLD) measurements on NNO/NAO superlattices, which can be directly compared to theory. The sample growth
89 and measurement procedures are described in Ref. (10). To extract r experimentally, the XLD sum rule (11) is applied for the
3I3z 2 ≠r2
90 Ni L edge, r= 4I ≠I3z 2 ≠r2
, where Ip corresponds to the integrated absorption measured with the polarization parallel to p.
x2 ≠y 2
91 Figure 1 shows the absorption for in-plane and out-of-plane polarizations as well as the difference spectrum of the monolayer
92 NNO/NAO superlattice. The values of r for the monolayer NNO/NAO superlattice, bilayer NNO/NAO superlattice, and bulk
93 NNO samples are 0.91 ± 0.03, 1.00 ± 0.02, and 1.02 ± 0.02, respectively.

8 of 11 Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis


Fig. S4. Electronic and structural disproportionation within DFT+U for the ground state relaxed structures for the bulk, monolayer, and bilayer.

Alexandru B. Georgescu, Oleg E. Peil, Ankit S. Disa, Antoine Georges,Andrew J. Millis 9 of 11


Fig. S5. (top) X-ray absorption spectra and (bottom) x-ray linear dichroism of monolayer NNO/NAO superlattice. Blue and pink curves in top panel correspond to absorption
with polarization in-plane and out-of-plane, respectively.

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94 References
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