Enhancement of the Rashba Effect in a Conducting SrTiO₃ Surface by MoO₃ Capping

Systems having inherent structural asymmetry retain the Rashba-type spin–orbit interaction, which ties the spin and momentum of electrons in the band structure, leading to coupled spin and charge transport. One of the electrical manifestations of the Rashba spin–orbit interaction is nonreciprocal charge transport, which could be utilized for rectifying devices. Further tuning of the Rashba spin–orbit interaction allows additional functionalities in spin–orbitronic applications. In this work, we present our study of nonreciprocal charge transport in a conducting SrTiO3 (001) surface and its significant enhancement by a capping layer. The conductive strontium titanate SrTiO3 (STO) (001) surface was created through oxygen vacancies by Ar+ irradiation, and the nonreciprocal signal was probed by angle- and magnetic field-dependent second harmonic voltage measurement with an AC current. We observed robust directional transport in the Ar+-irradiated sample at low temperatures. The magnitude of the nonreciprocal signal is highly dependent on the irradiation time as it affects the depth of the conducting layer and the impact of the topmost conducting layer. Moreover, the nonreciprocal resistance was significantly enhanced by simply adding a MoO3 capping layer on the conductive STO surface. These results show a simple methodology for tuning and investigating the Rashba effect in a conductive STO surface, which could be adopted for various two-dimensional (2D) conducting layers for spin–orbitronic applications.