title: Impurity-Mediated Early Condensation of a Charge Density Wave in an Atomic Wire Array.
abstract: We directly show how impurity atoms induce the condensation of a representative electronic phase, the charge density wave (CDW) phase, in atomic scale with scanning tunneling microscopy. Oxygen impurity atoms on the self-assembled metallic atomic wire array on a silicon crystal condense the CDW locally above the pristine transition temperature. More interestingly, the CDW along the wires is induced not by a single atomic impurity but by the cooperation of multiple impurities. First-principles calculations disclose the mechanism of the cooperation as the coherent superposition of the local lattice strain induced by impurities, stressing the coupled electronic and lattice degrees of freedom for the CDW. This opens the possibility of the strain engineering over electronic phases of atomic-scale systems.
authors.affiliation: Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems, Institute for Basic Science (IBS) , Pohang 790-784, Korea.|Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology , Pohang 790-784, Korea.
authors.forename: Han Woong
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Yeom
authors.affiliation: Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems, Institute for Basic Science (IBS) , Pohang 790-784, Korea.|Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology , Pohang 790-784, Korea.
authors.forename: Deok Mahn
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.affiliation: Interface Chemistry and Surface Engineering Department, Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research GmbH , Max-Planck-Straße 1, 40237 Düsseldorf, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wippermann
authors.affiliation: Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Physik, Universität Paderborn , 33098 Paderborn, Germany.
authors.forename: Wolf Gero
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Schmidt
keywords: atomic wire; charge density wave; impurity; phase transition; scanning tunneling microscopy