Emergent conductance and magnetism at metal oxide interfaces via internal charge transfer

Internal charge transfer across the interface of transition metal oxides is proven to be a powerful approach to induce new electronic structure in metamaterials (PRL 111, 116403 (2013); arXiv:1408.0217 (2014)). Here we use ab initio calculations to demonstrate that while SrVO$_3$ is a paramagnetic metal and SrMnO$_3$ is an antiferromagetic insulator, charge transfer in a SrVO$_3$/SrMnO$_3$ superlattice leads to both electronic and magnetic reconstructions on the Mn sites: the Mn $e_g$ states are electron doped and the Mn $t_{2g}$ core spins are ferromagnetically aligned. As a result, net magnetic moments are expected to emerge in the superlattice. Our work shows that charge transfer is a robust route to the design of novel two dimensional half metallic ferromagnets.