Enhancement of ionic conductivity in sm-doped ceria/yttria-stabilized zirconia heteroepitaxial structures

Recent developments in the fi eld of thin-fi lm growth technologies have allowed control at an atomic level of deposited layers, thus opening new perspectives in the fi eld of engineering of multilayers and heterostructures based on complex oxides.^[1] In particular, it is expected that oxide heterostructures, with almost ideal interfaces, may lead to interesting artifi cial materials with novel properties. Artifi cial thin-fi lm oxide structures make the already complex individual bulk properties even more interesting through their interaction at the interface. Following such an approach, a number of heterostructures have been tailored which show extraordinary properties that do not belong to the individual layers. These range from superconductivity at the interface between nonsuperconducting layers to high-mobility 2D conductivity at the interface between insulating oxides.^[2,3] The number of possible combinations of these oxides is enormous, and the potential for novel behavior having practical applications represents a strong motivation for this research.