Growth and Transport Studies of LaTiO$_{3}$ / KTaO$_{3}$ Heterostructures

Perovskite oxide heterostructures provide a rich platform for exploring emergent electronic properties, such as 2D electron gases (2DEGs) at interfaces. In this talk, we present results on the growth of LaTiO$_{3}$ / KTaO$_{3}$ heterostructures by molecular beam epitaxy and subsequent measurements of transport properties. Although both oxide materials are insulating in the bulk, metallic conduction is observed from T = 2 - 300 K. We achieve a room temperature carrier mobility of $\sim$ 25 cm$^{2}$ /Vs at a carrier density of $\sim$ 10$^{14}$ /cm$^{2}$. By comparison, 2DEGs in LaTiO$_{3}$ / SrTiO$_{3}$ and LaAlO$_{3}$ / SrTiO$_{3}$ have lower carrier mobility, but the same carrier density. We attribute some of the increase in mobility to the smaller band effective mass of the Ta 4d electrons compared to the Ti 3d electrons.