Artificial Superconducting Kondo Lattice in a Van Der Waals Heterostructure

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2024 Oct 11

PMID 39394191

Authors

Kai Fan

Heng Jin

Bing Huang

Guijing Duan

Rong Yu

Zhen-Yu Liu

Hui-Nan Xia

Li-Si Liu

Yao Zhang

Tao Xie

Qiao-Yin Tang

Gang Chen

Wen-Hao Zhang

F C Chen

X Luo

W J Lu

Y P Sun

Ying-Shuang Fu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Engineering Kondo lattice with tailored functionality is desirable for elucidating the heavy fermion physics. We realize the construction of an artificial Kondo lattice/superconductor heterojunction by growing monolayer VSe on bulk 2H-NbSe with molecular beam epitaxy. Spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy measurements show the emergence of a new charge density wave (CDW) phase with periodicity on the monolayer VSe. Unexpectedly, a pronounced Kondo resonance appears around the Fermi level, and distributes uniformly over the entire film, evidencing the formation of Kondo lattice. Density functional theory calculations suggest the existence of magnetic interstitial V atoms in VSe/NbSe, which play a key role in forming the CDW phase along with the Kondo lattice observed in VSe. The Kondo origin is verified from both the magnetic field and temperature dependences of the resonance peak, yielding a Kondo temperature of ~ 44 K. Moreover, a superconducting proximity gap opens on monolayer VSe, whose shape deviates from the function of one-band BCS superconductor, but is reproduced by model calculations with heavy electrons participating the pairing condensate. Our work lays the experimental foundation for studying interactions between the heavy fermion liquids and the superconducting condensate.

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