First-principles studies of water adsorption on graphene: The role of the substrate

We investigate the electronic properties of graphene upon water adsorption and study the influence of the SiO2 substrate in this context using density functional calculations. Perfect suspended graphene is rather insensitive to H2O adsorbates, as doping requires highly oriented H2O clusters. For graphene on a defective SiO2 substrate, we find a strongly different behavior: H2O adsorbates can shift the substrate's impurity bands and change their hybridization with the graphene bands. In this way, H2O can lead to doping of graphene for much lower adsorbate concentrations than for free hanged graphene. The effect depends strongly on the microscopic substrate properties.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Electronic Structures and Optical Properties of Partially and Fully Fluorinated Graphene

In this letter we study the electronic structures and optical properties of partially and fully fluorinated graphene by a combination of abinitio G0W0 calculations and large-scale multi-orbital tight-binding simulations. We find that for partially fluorinated graphene, the appearance of paired fluorine atoms is more favorable than unpaired atoms. We also show that different types of structural disorder, such as carbon vacancies, fluorine vacancies, fluorine vacancy-clusters and fluorine armchair- and zigzag-clusters, will introduce different types of midgap states and extra excitations within the optical gap. Furthermore we argue that the local formation of $sp^3$ bonds upon fluorination can be distinguished from other disorder inducing mechanisms which do not destroy the $sp^2$ hybrid orbitals by measuring the polarization rotation of passing polarized light.Comment: Final version appeared in Phys. Rev. Let

Optically and electrically controllable adatom spin-orbital dynamics in transition metal dichalcogenides

We analyze the interplay of spin-valley coupling, orbital physics and magnetic anisotropy taking place at single magnetic atoms adsorbed on semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides, MX$_2$ (M = Mo, W; X = S, Se). Orbital selection rules turn out to govern the kinetic exchange coupling between the adatom and charge carriers in the MX$_2$ and lead to highly orbitally dependent spin-flip scattering rates, as we illustrate for the example of transition metal adatoms with $d^9$ configuration. Our ab initio calculations suggest that $d^9$ configurations are realizable by single Co, Rh, or Ir adatoms on MoS$_2$, which additionally exhibit a sizable magnetic anisotropy. We find that the interaction of the adatom with carriers in the MX$_2$ allows to tune its behavior from a quantum regime with full Kondo screening to a regime of "Ising spintronics" where its spin-orbital moment acts as classical bit, which can be erased and written electronically and optically.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Electronic excitation spectra of the five-orbital Anderson impurity model: From the atomic limit to itinerant atomic magnetism

We study the competition of Coulomb interaction and hybridization effects in the five-orbital Anderson impurity model by means of continuous time quantum Monte Carlo, exact diagonalization, and Hartree-Fock calculations. The dependence of the electronic excitation spectra and thermodynamic ground-state properties on the hybridization strength and the form of the Coulomb interaction is systematically investigated for impurity occupation number N≈6. With increasing hybridization strength, a Kondo resonance emerges, broadens and merges with some of the upper and lower Hubbard peaks. Concomitantly, there is an increase of charge fluctuations at the impurity site. In contrast to the single-orbital model, some atomic multiplet peaks and exchange split satellites persist despite strong charge fluctuations. We find that Hund's coupling leads to a state that may be characterized as an itinerant single atom magnet. As the filling is increased, the magnetic moment decreases, but the spin freezing phenomenon persists up to N≈8. When the hybridization is weak, the positions of atomic ionization peaks are rather sensitive to shifts of the impurity on-site energies. This allows to distinguish atomic ionization peaks from quasiparticle peaks or satellites in the electronic excitation spectra. On the methodological side we show that a comparison between the spectra obtained from Monte Carlo and exact diagonalization calculations is possible if the charge fluctuations are properly matched

Coulomb-Engineered Heterojunctions and Dynamical Screening in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers

The manipulation of two-dimensional materials via their dielectric environment offers novel opportunities to control electronic as well as optical properties and allows to imprint nanostructures in a non-invasive way. Here we asses the potential of monolayer semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) for Coulomb engineering in a material realistic and quantitative manner. We compare the response of different TMDC materials to modifications of their dielectric surrounding, analyze effects of dynamic substrate screening, i.e. frequency dependencies in the dielectric functions, and discuss inherent length scales of Coulomb-engineered heterojunctions. We find symmetric and rigid-shift-like quasi-particle band-gap modulations for both, instantaneous and dynamic substrate screening. From this we derive short-ranged self energies for an effective multi-scale modeling of Coulomb engineered heterojunctions composed of an homogeneous monolayer placed on a spatially structured substrate. For these heterojunctions, we show that band gap modulations on the length scale of a few lattice constants are possible rendering external limitations of the substrate structuring more important than internal effects. We find that all semiconducting TMDCs are similarly well suited for these external and non-invasive modifications.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Critical role of interlayer dimer correlations in the superconductivity of La3_3Ni2_2O7_7

The recent discovery of superconductivity in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ with $T_\mathrm{c} \simeq 80~\mathrm{K}$ under high pressure opens up a new route to high-$T_\mathrm{c}$ superconductivity. This material realizes a bilayer square lattice model featuring a strong interlayer hybridization unlike many unconventional superconductors. A key question in this regard concerns how electronic correlations driven by the interlayer hybridization affect the low-energy electronic structure and the concomitant superconductivity. Here, we demonstrate using a cluster dynamical mean-field theory that the interlayer electronic correlations (IECs) induce a Lifshitz transition resulting in a change of Fermi surface topology. By solving an appropriate gap equation, we further show that the dominant pairing instability (intraorbital $s$-wave/interorbital $d_{x^2-y^2}$-wave) is enhanced by the IECs. The underlying mechanism is the quenching of a strong ferromagnetic channel, resulting from the Lifshitz transition driven by the IECs. Our finding establishes the role of IECs in La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ and potentially paves the way to designing higher-\Tc nickelates

Proximity Enhanced Quantum Spin Hall State in Graphene

Graphene is the first model system of two-dimensional topological insulator (TI), also known as quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator. The QSH effect in graphene, however, has eluded direct experimental detection because of its extremely small energy gap due to the weak spin-orbit coupling. Here we predict by ab initio calculations a giant (three orders of magnitude) proximity induced enhancement of the TI energy gap in the graphene layer that is sandwiched between thin slabs of Sb2Te3 (or MoTe2). This gap (1.5 meV) is accessible by existing experimental techniques, and it can be further enhanced by tuning the interlayer distance via compression. We reveal by a tight-binding study that the QSH state in graphene is driven by the Kane-Mele interaction in competition with Kekul\'e deformation and symmetry breaking. The present work identifies a new family of graphene-based TIs with an observable and controllable bulk energy gap in the graphene layer, thus opening a new avenue for direct verification and exploration of the long-sought QSH effect in graphene.Comment: 4 figures in Carbon, 201