Jérôme Lesueur

In 2004, Ohtomo and Hwang discovered that at the interface between a very thin layer (a few nm thick) of the insulator LaAlO3 grown on top of another insulator SrTiO3, a highly 2D conducting gas forms.
Then Reyren et al discovered that this 2DEG is a superconductor with a Tc of around 200 mK. We have recently shown that the system LaTiO3/SrTiO3 involving a Mott insulator (LaTiO3) is also a superconductor.
Moreover, the properties of these fascinating materials can be tuned by applying an electric field through a gate voltage, from a superconductor to an insulator.
This open a new route towards the study of strongly correlated materials, and possibly the ability of making new nanodevices.