Self-Assembly of SrTiO₃(001) Chemical-Terminations: A Route for Oxide-Nanostructure Fabrication by Selective Growth

We report a method to fabricate functional oxide nanostructures ordered over the centimeter scale. Self-assembly of SrTiO 3 (001) chemical terminations through appropriate thermal processing leads to large-area chemical nanopattering of the surface. Such nanopatterned surfaces, stable at relatively high temperature, can be used as template to grow functional ordered nanostructures, exploiting the termination-dependent nucleation. As an example of this potential, we have fabricated ordered arrays of conducting epitaxial SrRuO 3 nanostripes separated by insulating trenches. Conductivity maps by atomic force microscopy confirm the coexistence of sharp conducting/insulating regions in low-dimensional structures.