Non-magnetic ground state of Ni adatoms on Te-terminated bismuth chalcogenide topological insulators

Abstract

We report on the quenching of single Ni adatom moments on Te-terminated Bi2Te2Se and Bi2Te3 topological insulator surfaces. The effect becomes manifested as a missing X-ray magnetic circular dichroism for resonant L3,2 transitions into partially filled Ni 3d states of occupancy n_d = 9.2. On the basis of a comparative study of Ni and Fe using scanning tunneling microscopy and ab initio calculations we are able to relate the element specific moment formation to a local Stoner criterion. While Fe adatoms form large spin moments of m_s = 2.54 mu_B with out-of-plane anisotropy due to a sufficiently large density of states at the Fermi energy, Ni remains well below an effective Stoner threshold for local moment formation. With the Fermi level remaining in the bulk band gap after adatom deposition, non-magnetic Ni and preferentially out-of-plane oriented magnetic Fe with similar structural properties on Bi2Te2Se surfaces constitute a perfect platform to study off-on effects of time-reversal symmetry breaking on topological surface states.

References in corpus (20)

• Topological Insulators
• Topological insulators and superconductors
• Magnetic impurities on the surface of a topological insulator
• A topological insulator surface under strong Coulomb, magnetic and disorder perturbations
• Impurity-induced states on the surface of 3D topological insulators
• Ordering of magnetic impurities and tunable electronic properties of topological insulators
• Tolerance of topological surface states towards magnetic moments: Fe on Bi2Te3 and Bi2Se3
• In-plane magnetic anisotropy of Fe atoms on Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$(111)
• Nonmagnetic band gap at the Dirac point of the magnetic topological insulator (Bi${}_{1-x}$Mn${}_x{)}_2$Se${}_3$
• Controllable magnetic doping of the surface state of a topological insulator
• Signatures of Dirac fermion-mediated magnetic order
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• Dual nature of magnetic dopants and competing trends in topological insulators
• Bulk Band Structure of Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$
• Filling of magnetic-impurity-induced gap in topological insulators by potential scattering
• Self-consistent theory of ferromagnetism on the surface of a topological insulator
• Experimental realization of a topological p-n junction by intrinsic defect-grading
• Strong out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy of Fe adatoms on Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$
• Single 3$d$ transition metal atoms on multi-layer graphene systems: electronic configurations, bonding mechanisms and role of the substrate
• Superconductivity of lanthanum revisited: enhanced critical temperature in the clean limit

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Evidence for interfacial superconductivity in a bi-collinear antiferromagnetically ordered FeTe monolayer on a topological insulator
• Approaching a Minimal Topological Electronic Structure in Antiferromagnetic Topological Insulator MnBi2Te4 via Surface Modification
• Local moment formation and magnetic coupling of Mn guest atoms in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$: a low-temperature ferromagnetic resonance study
• Controlling the real-time dynamics of a spin coupled to the helical edge states of the Kane-Mele model