Laterally-confined two-dimensional electron gases in self-patterned   LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces
  A bottom-up process has been used to engineer the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface atomic composition and locally confine the two-dimensional electron gas to lateral sizes in the order of 100 nm. This is achieved by using SrTiO3(001) substrate surfaces with self-patterned chemical termination, which is replicated by the LaAlO3 layer, resulting in a modulated LaO/TiO2 and AlO2/SrO interface composition. We demonstrate the confinement of the conducting interface forming either long-range ordered nanometric stripes or isolated regions. Our results demonstrate that engineering the interface chemical termination is a suitable strategy towards nanoscale lateral confinement of two-dimensional high-mobility systems. 
M. Foerster, R. Bachelet, V. Laukhin, J. Fontcuberta, G. Herranz, and   F. Sanchez
cond-mat.mtrl-sci