Correlated electronic states at domain walls of a Mott-charge-density-wave insulator 1T-TaS2

Doohee Cho, Gyeongcheol Gye, Jinwon Lee, Sung Hoon Lee, Lihai Wang, Sang Wook Cheong, Han Woong Yeom

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

50 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Domain walls in interacting electronic systems can have distinct localized states, which often govern physical properties and may lead to unprecedented functionalities and novel devices. However, electronic states within domain walls themselves have not been clearly identified and understood for strongly correlated electron systems. Here, we resolve the electronic states localized on domain walls in a Mott-charge-density-wave insulator 1T-TaS2 using scanning tunneling spectroscopy. We establish that the domain wall state decomposes into two nonconducting states located at the center of domain walls and edges of domains. Theoretical calculations reveal their atomistic origin as the local reconstruction of domain walls under the strong influence of electron correlation. Our results introduce a concept for the domain wall electronic property, the walls own internal degrees of freedom, which is potentially related to the controllability of domain wall electronic properties.

Original languageEnglish
Article number392
JournalNature communications
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017 Dec 1

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Institute for Basic Science (Grant No. IBS-R014-D1). L.W. and S.-W.C. are partially supported by the Max Planck POSTECH/KOREA Research Initiative Program (Grant No. 2011-0031558) through NRF of Korea funded by MEST. S.-W.C. is also supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations EPiQS Initiative through Grant GBMF4413 to the Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

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

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