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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Demonstrating Kondo behavior by temperature-dependent scanning tunneling spectroscopy

Elia Turco1,*, Markus Aapro2,†, Somesh C. Ganguli2, Nils Krane1, Robert Drost2, Nahual Sobrino3, Annika Bernhardt4, Michal Juríček4, Roman Fasel1,5 et al.

Pascal Ruffieux1, Peter Liljeroth2, and David Jacob3,6,‡

  • 1nanotech@surfaces Laboratory, Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
  • 2Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, 00076 Aalto, Finland
  • 3Departamento de Polímeros y Materiales Avanzados: Física, Química y Tecnología, Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU, Av. Tolosa 72, E-20018 San Sebastián, Spain
  • 4Department of Chemistry, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
  • 5Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
  • 6IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Plaza Euskadi 5, E-48009 Bilbao, Spain

  • *elia.turco@empa.ch
  • †markus.aapro@aalto.fi
  • ‡david.jacob@ehu.es
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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L022061 – Published 12 June, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L022061

Abstract

The Kondo effect describes the scattering of conduction electrons by magnetic impurities, manifesting as an electronic resonance at the Fermi energy with a distinctive temperature evolution. In this Letter, we present a critical evaluation of the current methodology employed to demonstrate Kondo behavior in transport measurements, underscoring the limitations of established theoretical frameworks and the influence of extrinsic broadening. We introduce an approach for analyzing spectroscopic indicators of the Kondo effect, employing the Hurwitz-Fano lineshape as a model for the Kondo resonance in the presence of extrinsic broadening. Through precise scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements on an exemplary spin-1/2 Kondo system, phenalenyl on Au(111), we demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed protocol in extracting accurate intrinsic Kondo linewidths from finite-temperature measurements. The extracted linewidths exhibit a robust fit with a recently derived expression for the temperature-dependent intrinsic Kondo linewidth, providing compelling evidence for the validity of the underlying theory.

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Supplemental Material

References (44)

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L022061– Published 12 June, 2024
  • Received 13 October 2023
  • Revised 2 March 2024
  • Accepted 22 April 2024
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