Avoided metallicity in a hole-doped Mott insulator on a triangular lattice.

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Yim CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11405841 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature