RESUMEN
Silicon oxide can be formed in a crystalline form, when prepared on a metallic substrate. It is a candidate support catalyst and possibly the ultimately thin version of a dielectric host material for two-dimensional materials and heterostructures. We determine the atomic structure and chemical bonding of the ultimately thin version of the oxide, epitaxially grown on Ru(0001). In particular, we establish the existence of two sublattices defined by metal-oxygen-silicon bridges involving inequivalent substrate sites. We further discover four electronic bands below the Fermi level, at high binding energy, two of them having a linear dispersion at their crossing K point (Dirac cones) and two others forming semiflat bands. While the latter two correspond to hybridized states between the oxide and the metal, the former relate to the topmost silicon-oxygen plane, which is not directly coupled to the substrate. Our analysis is based on high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and density functional theory calculations.
RESUMEN
Cerium intermetallics have raised a lot of interest for the past forty years thanks to their very unusual and interesting electronic and magnetic properties. This can be explained by the peculiar electronic configuration of Ce (4f1) that allows different oxidation states leading to singular behavior such as quantum phase transitions, heavy-fermion behavior and the Kondo effect. In this work, we used a mixed-valence molecular analogue to study the Kondo effect down to the atomic scale by means of scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) for which new many-body effects are expected to emerge due to reduced dimensionality and specific chemical environment of the 4f-ion. For that purpose, double-decker molecular complexes hosting a Ce ion were synthesized and adsorbed onto Ag and Cu (111) surfaces forming two-dimensional lattices. As a result, we observed a zero-bias conductance resonance on Ag only indicative of a Kondo effect arising from the coupling between a molecular spin and the conducting electrons of the metallic surface. The emergence of the Kondo effect is discussed in terms of intermolecular and molecule/substrate interactions. This work expands the little knowledge to date on the structural and related electronic properties of Ce-based molecular systems on surfaces. In particular, it shows that Ce-based double deckers are good platforms to obtain insight into 4f-induced many-body effects down to the nanometer scale and in two-dimensional lattices. Moreover, this outcome has a strong impact for future applications of molecular devices in which both metals are commonly used as electrical contacts.
RESUMEN
On-surface covalent self-assembly of organic molecules is a very promising bottom-up approach for producing atomically controlled nanostructures. Due to their highly tuneable properties, these structures may be used as building blocks in electronic carbon-based molecular devices. Following this idea, here we report on the electronic structure of an ordered array of poly(para-phenylene) nanowires produced by surface-catalysed dehalogenative reaction. By scanning tunnelling spectroscopy we follow the quantization of unoccupied molecular states as a function of oligomer length, with Fermi level crossing observed for long chains. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy reveals a quasi-1D valence band as well as a direct gap of 1.15 eV, as the conduction band is partially filled through adsorption on the surface. Tight-binding modelling and ab initio density functional theory calculations lead to a full description of the band structure, including the gap size and charge transfer mechanisms, highlighting a strong substrate-molecule interaction that drives the system into a metallic behaviour.
RESUMEN
Graphene nanoribbons grown on sidewall facets of SiC have demonstrated exceptional quantized ballistic transport up to 15 µm at room temperature. Angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) has shown that the ribbons have the band structure of charge neutral graphene, while bent regions of the ribbon develop a bandgap. We present scanning tunneling microscopy and transmission electron microscopy of armchair nanoribbons grown on recrystallized sidewall trenches etched in SiC. We show that the nanoribbons consist of a single graphene layer essentially decoupled from the facet surface. The nanoribbons are bordered by 1-2 nm wide bent miniribbons at both the top and bottom edges of the nanoribbons. We establish that nanoscale confinement in the graphene miniribbons is the origin of the local large band gap observed in ARPES. The structural results presented here show how this gap is formed and provide a framework to help understand ballistic transport in sidewall graphene.
Asunto(s)
Grafito/química , Nanotubos de Carbono/química , Nanotubos de Carbono/ultraestructura , Microscopía Electrónica de Transmisión , Microscopía de Túnel de RastreoRESUMEN
The self-organized growth of nanostructures on surfaces could offer many advantages in the development of new catalysts, electronic devices and magnetic data-storage media. The local density of electronic states on the surface at the relevant energy scale strongly influences chemical reactivity, as does the shape of the nanoparticles. The electronic properties of surfaces also influence the growth and decay of nanostructures such as dimers, chains and superlattices of atoms or noble metal islands. Controlling these properties on length scales shorter than the diffusion lengths of the electrons and spins (some tens of nanometres for metals) is a major goal in electronics and spintronics. However, to date, there have been few studies of the electronic properties of self-organized nanostructures. Here we report the self-organized growth of macroscopic superlattices of Ag or Cu nanostructures on Au vicinal surfaces, and demonstrate that the electronic properties of these systems depend on the balance between the confinement and the perturbation of the surface states caused by the steps and the nanostructures' superlattice. We also show that the local density of states can be modified in a controlled way by adjusting simple parameters such as the type of metal deposited and the degree of coverage.