Artificial Relativistic Molecules

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.

arXiv comment7 page, 3 figures

References in corpus (7)

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• Experimental realization and characterization of an electronic Lieb lattice
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