Observation of a Mott insulating ground state for Sn/Ge(111) at low temperature

Abstract

We report an investigation on the properties of 0.33 ML of Sn on Ge(111) at temperatures down to 5 K. Low-energy electron diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy show that the (3x3) phase formed at 200 K, reverts to a new (root-3xroot-3)R30 phase below 30 K. The vertical distortion characteristic of the (3x3) phase is lost across the phase transition. Angle-resolved photoemission experiments show that concomitantly with the structural phase transition, a metal-insulator phase transition takes place. In agreement with theoretical predictions, the (root-3xroot-3)R30 ground state is interpreted as the experimental realization of a Mott insulator for a narrow half-filled band in a two-dimensional triangular lattice.

4 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Triangular Mott-Hubbard Insulator Phases of Sn/Si(111) and Sn/Ge(111) Surfaces
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• Realistic modeling of the electronic structure and the effect of correlations for Sn/Si(111) and Sn/Ge(111) surfaces
• Mott phase in a van der Waals transition-metal halide at single layer limit
• Chiral spin texture in the charge-density-wave phase of the correlated metallic Pb/Si(111) monolayer
• Spectroscopic evidence for spin-polarized edge states in graphitic Si nanowires
• Uncertainty principle for experimental measurements: Fast versus slow probes
• Zero-bias anomaly in nano-scale hole-doped Mott insulators on a triangular silicon surface
• Ferrimagnetic Slater Insulator Phase of the Sn/Ge(111) Surface
• Phonon-induced electronic relaxation in a strongly correlated system: the Sn/Si(111) $(\sqrt{3}\times \sqrt{3})$ adlayer revisited
• The electronic structure of a doped Mott-Hubbard surface