Anisotropic Metal-Insulator Transition in Epitaxial Thin Films

Abstract

Quantum wells made of simple polyvalent metals represent a novel family of doped 2D Mott-Hubbard insulators. As scanning tunneling microscopy experiments show, these systems exhibit an anisotropic form of metal-insulator transition. Their elementary excitations possess coherent wave-like properties along the normal axis, and show an incoherent behavior in-plane. The development of such an anisotropic coherence is most likely related to Coulomb interaction between localized and delocalized thin film electronic states - 2D Kondo screening.

4 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (4)

• Kondo Physics in a Single Electron Transistor
• Quantum Theory of the Smectic Metal State in Stripe Phases
• Non conventional screening of the Coulomb interaction in low dimensional and finite size system
• Electroneutrality and the Friedel sum rule in a Luttinger liquid

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Influence of the substrate lattice structure on the formation of Quantum Well States in thin In and Pb films on silicon
• Quantum-well and modified image-potential states in thin Pb(111) films: an estimate for the local work function
• Tunneling interferometry and measurement of thickness of ultrathin metallic Pb(111) films
• Nonuniform quantum-confined states and visualization of hidden defects in thin Pb(111) films