TY - JOUR
T1 - Avoided metallicity in a hole-doped Mott insulator on a triangular lattice
AU - Yim, Chi Ming
AU - Siemann, Gesa-R
AU - Stavrić, Srdjan
AU - Khim, Seunghyun
AU - Benedičič, Izidor
AU - Murgatroyd, Philip A. E.
AU - Antonelli, Tommaso
AU - Watson, Matthew D.
AU - Mackenzie, Andrew P.
AU - Picozzi, Silvia
AU - King, Phil D. C.
AU - Wahl, Peter
N1 - Funding: We gratefully acknowledge support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant Nos. EP/S005005/1 and EP/T02108X/1), the European Research Council (through the QUESTDO project, 714193), the Leverhulme Trust (Grant No. RL-2016-006), the Royal Society through the International Exchange grant IEC\R2\222041 and the Italian Ministry of Research through the PRIN-2022 “SORBET” project No.2022ZY8HJY. C.M.Y. acknowledges support from Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program 21PJ1405400 and TDLI Start-up Fund.
PY - 2024/9/16
Y1 - 2024/9/16
N2 - Doping of a Mott insulator gives rise to a wide variety of exotic emergent states, from high-temperature superconductivity to charge, spin, and orbital orders. The physics underpinning their evolution is, however, poorly understood. A major challenge is the chemical complexity associated with traditional routes to doping. Here, we study the Mott insulating CrO2 layer of the delafossite PdCrO2, where an intrinsic polar catastrophe provides a clean route to doping of the surface. From scanning tunnelling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission, we find that the surface stays insulating accompanied by a short-range ordered state. From density functional theory, we demonstrate how the formation of charge disproportionation results in an insulating ground state of the surface that is disparate from the hidden Mott insulator in the bulk. We demonstrate that voltage pulses induce local modifications to this state which relax over tens of minutes, pointing to a glassy nature of the charge order.
AB - Doping of a Mott insulator gives rise to a wide variety of exotic emergent states, from high-temperature superconductivity to charge, spin, and orbital orders. The physics underpinning their evolution is, however, poorly understood. A major challenge is the chemical complexity associated with traditional routes to doping. Here, we study the Mott insulating CrO2 layer of the delafossite PdCrO2, where an intrinsic polar catastrophe provides a clean route to doping of the surface. From scanning tunnelling microscopy and angle-resolved photoemission, we find that the surface stays insulating accompanied by a short-range ordered state. From density functional theory, we demonstrate how the formation of charge disproportionation results in an insulating ground state of the surface that is disparate from the hidden Mott insulator in the bulk. We demonstrate that voltage pulses induce local modifications to this state which relax over tens of minutes, pointing to a glassy nature of the charge order.
U2 - 10.1038/S41467-024-52007-Z
DO - 10.1038/S41467-024-52007-Z
M3 - Article
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 15
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
M1 - 8098
ER -