2001/12/31 by Gregory A. Fiete, Gergely Zaránd, Gergely Zarand +2 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic properties of thin films #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.66.024431
published as Phys. Rev. B 66, 024431 (2002). · 24 pages, clarification of several points
arxiv created 2002/04/15 · openalex publication_date 2002/07/22 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Motivated by recent scanning tunneling microscope (STM) experiments on cobalt clusters adsorbed on single-wall metallic nanotubes [Odom et al., Science 290, 1549 (2000)], we study theoretically the size dependence of STM spectra and spin-flip scattering of electrons from finite size ferromagnetic clusters adsorbed on metallic surfaces. We study two models of nanometer size ferromagnets. (i) An itinerant model with delocalized s, p, and d electrons and (ii) a local moment model with both localized d-level spins and delocalized cluster electrons. The effective exchange coupling between the spin of the cluster and the conduction electrons of the metallic substrate depends on the specific details of the single-particle density of states on the cluster. The calculated Kondo coupling is inversely proportional to the total spin of the ferromagnetic cluster in both models and thus the Kondo temperature is rapidly suppressed as the size of the cluster increases. Mesoscopic fluctuations in the charging energies and magnetization of nanoclusters can lead to large fluctuations in the Kondo temperatures and a very asymmetric voltage dependence of the STM spectra. We compare our results to the experiments.