1. Inducing Kondo Screening of Vacancy Magnetic Moments in Graphene with Gating and Local Curvature
- Author
-
Yuhang Jiang, Jinhai Mao, Daniel May, Guohong Li, Guang-Yu Guo, Frithjof B. Anders, Kenji Watanabeand, Eva Y. Andrei, Takashi Taniguchi, and Po-Wei Lo
- Subjects
Science ,General Physics and Astronomy ,FOS: Physical sciences ,02 engineering and technology ,Electron ,Curvature ,01 natural sciences ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,law.invention ,law ,Vacancy defect ,0103 physical sciences ,Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) ,Physics::Atomic and Molecular Clusters ,Singlet state ,010306 general physics ,lcsh:Science ,Quantum ,Physics ,Multidisciplinary ,Condensed matter physics ,Magnetic moment ,Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics ,Graphene ,Condensed Matter::Other ,General Chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Condensed Matter::Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Hall Effect ,lcsh:Q ,Condensed Matter::Strongly Correlated Electrons ,0210 nano-technology ,Pseudogap - Abstract
In normal metals, the magnetic-moment of impurity-spins disappears below a characteristic Kondo temperature, TK. This marks the formation of a polarized cloud of conduction band electrons that screen the magnetic moment . In contrast, moments embedded in insulators remain unscreened at all temperatures. This raises the question about the fate of magnetic-moments in intermediate, pseudogap systems, such as graphene. In these systems coupling between the local moment and the conduction band electrons is predicted to drive a quantum phase-transition between a local-moment phase and a Kondo-screened singlet phase as illustrated in Fig. 1A. However, attempts to experimentally confirm these predictions and their intriguing consequences such as the ability to electrostatically tune magnetic-moments, have been elusive. Here we report the observation of Kondo screening and the quantum phase-transition between screened and unscreened phases of vacancy magnetic-moments in graphene. Using scanning-tunneling-microscopy (STM), spectroscopy (STS) and numerical-renormalization-group (NRG) calculations, we identified Kondo-screening by its spectroscopic signature and mapped the quantum phase-transition as a function of coupling strength and chemical potential. We show that the coupling strength can be tuned across this transition by variations in the local curvature and furthermore that the transition makes it possible to turn the magnetic-moment on and off with a gate voltage., 28 pages 9 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1711.06942
- Published
- 2019