Building blocks for atomically assembled magnetic and electronic artificial lattices

Abstract

This thesis focuses on possible platforms for a bottom-up approach towards realizing and characterizing atomically assembled magnetic and electronic artificial lattices. For this, we make use of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which provides a local probe of the magnetic and electronic properties of the sample and allows for the atom-by-atom construction of extended lattices. On the one hand, to address avenues for constructing extended spin lattices, we study single Fe atoms coordinated on the four-fold symmetric nitrogen binding site of the Cu2N/Cu3Au surface—a system which permits large-scale atomic assembly, and allows for independent access to both the orbital and spin degrees of freedom. On the other hand, we investigate the viability of laterally confined vacuum resonances on the chlorinated Cu(100) surface as a basis for constructing electronic lattices. We atomically assemble dimers and trimers of various geometries to determine the tight-binding parameters, and as a proof of concept, experimentally realize a looped Su-Schrieffer–Heeger chain using this platform. These studies are made possible by means of a low-temperature, ultra-high vacuum STM, which allows for atom manipulation and, via spectroscopic techniques, permits us to locally probe the sample density of states and detect inelastic excitations of the spin and orbital angular momentum.