2019/01/31 by Wen-Xuan Qiu, Liang Ma, Jing-Tao Lü +2 · 2 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Chemistry #Crystallography #Lattice (music) #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.104.235404
published in Physical review. B./Physical review. B 104(23) (American Physical Society) · 15 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2021/08/27 · openalex publication_date 2021/12/03 · openalex created_date 2021/12/31 · arxiv updated 2022/03/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We theoretically demonstrate that the desired px,y-orbital honeycomb electron lattice can be readily realized by arranging CO molecules into a hexagonal lattice on Cu(111) surface with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The electronic structure of the Cu surface states in the presence of CO molecules is calculated with various methods, i.e.~DFT simulations, muffin-tin potential model and tight-binding model. Our calculations indicate that, by measuring the LDOS pattern using STM, the p-orbital surface bands can be immediately identified in experiment. We also give an analytic interpretation of the p-orbital LDOS pattern with k ⋅ p method. Meanwhile, different from the case of graphene, the p-orbital honeycomb lattice has two kinds of edge states, which can also be directly observed in STM experiment. Our work points out a feasible way to construct a px,y-orbital honeycomb electron lattice in a real system, which may have exotic properties, such as Wigner crystal, ferromagnetism, f-wave superconductivity, quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect. Furthermore, we also propose a simple way to calculate and identify the modified Cu surface bands in the Cu/CO systems with the DFT simulations. Considering the recent works about p-orbital square lattice in similar systems [M. R. Slot, et al. Nat. Phys. 13, 672 (2017); Liang Ma, et al. Phys. Rev. B 99, 205403 (2019)], our work once again illustrates that the artificial electron lattice on metal surface is an ideal platform to study the orbital physics in a controllable way.