Artificial relativistic molecules

Jae Whan Park, Hyo Sung Kim, Thomas Brumme, Thomas Heine, Han Woong Yeom

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We fabricate artificial molecules composed of heavy atom lead on a van der Waals crystal. Pb atoms templated on a honeycomb charge-order superstructure of IrTe2 form clusters ranging from dimers to heptamers including benzene-shaped ring hexamers. Tunneling spectroscopy and electronic structure calculations reveal the formation of unusual relativistic molecular orbitals within the clusters. The spin–orbit coupling is essential both in forming such Dirac electronic states and stabilizing the artificial molecules by reducing the adatom–substrate interaction. Lead atoms are found to be ideally suited for a maximized relativistic effect. This work initiates the use of novel two-dimensional orderings to guide the fabrication of artificial molecules of unprecedented properties.

Original languageEnglish
Article number815
JournalNature communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Dec 1

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
J.W.P., H.S.K., and H.W.Y. were supported by Institute for Basic Science (grant no. IBS-R014-D1). The IrTe2 crystal was provided by S.W. Cheong in Rutgers University. J. Lee is appreciated for his help in data processing. T.B. and T.H. used the ZIH Dresden computational resources.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Chemistry(all)
  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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