Competing interactions and emerging phases in low-spin d⁵ perovskites: Bulk and Ultrathin Films

Due to the delicate interplay between onsite Coulomb repulsion (U) and spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the 4d and 5d transition metal oxides have emerged out as exotic quantum materials. By performing SOC tunable DFT+U calculations supplemented with a multi-orbital Hubbard model, on bulk and thin films of the prototype system SrIrO₃, we present eight electronic and magnetic phases in the U-SOC space that can be observed in the family of low-spin bulk d⁵ perovskites. With reduced dimensionality, we observe six unique phases. Specifically, the film terminated by IrO₂ layers exhibits multiple Dirac states in the weak correlation regime. The films exhibits large magnetic anisotropy energy to become promising candidates for magnetic memory and storage devices.