Kondo Holes in the Two-Dimensional Itinerant Ising Ferromagnet Fe3GeTe2

Mengting Zhao; Bin-Bin Chen; Yilian Xi; Yanyan Zhao; Hang Xu; Hongrun Zhang; Ningyan Cheng; Haifeng Feng; Jincheng Zhuang; Feng Pan; Xun Xu; Weichang Hao; Wei Li; Si Zhou; Shi Xue Dou; Yi Du

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01661

Kondo Holes in the Two-Dimensional Itinerant Ising Ferromagnet Fe₃GeTe₂

Nano Lett. 2021 Jul 28;21(14):6117-6123. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01661. Epub 2021 Jul 19.

Authors

Mengting Zhao^{1

2}, Bin-Bin Chen¹, Yilian Xi^{1

2}, Yanyan Zhao³, Hang Xu¹, Hongrun Zhang¹, Ningyan Cheng⁴, Haifeng Feng^{1

2}, Jincheng Zhuang¹, Feng Pan⁵, Xun Xu^{1

2}, Weichang Hao¹, Wei Li^{1

6}, Si Zhou^{2

3}, Shi Xue Dou^{1

2}, Yi Du^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ BUAA-UOW Joint Research Centre and School of Physics, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
² Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2500, Australia.
³ Key Laboratory of Materials Modification by Laser, Ion and Electron Beams, Ministry of Education, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
⁴ Information Materials and Intelligent Sensing Laboratory of Anhui Province, Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials of Ministry of Education, Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.
⁵ Research Institute for Frontier Science, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
⁶ International Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.

PMID: 34279960
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01661

Abstract

Heavy Fermion (HF) states emerge in correlated quantum materials due to the intriguing interplay between localized magnetic moments and itinerant electrons but rarely appear in 3d-electron systems due to high itinerancy of d-electrons. Here, an anomalous enhancement of Kondo screening is observed at the Kondo hole of local Fe vacancies in Fe₃GeTe₂ which is a recently discovered 3d-HF system featuring Kondo lattice and two-dimensional itinerant ferromagnetism. An itinerant Kondo-Ising model is established to reproduce the experimental results and provides insight into the competition between Ising ferromagnetism and Kondo screening. Our work explains the microscopic origin of the d-electron HF states in Fe₃GeTe₂ and inspires future studies of the enriched quantum many-body effects with Kondo holes.

Keywords: 3d-electron heavy Fermions; Fe3−xGeTe2; Ising ferromagnet; Kondo holes.