Ramakrishna Aluru ! Real Space Imaging of Magnetic Order in Fe1+yTe In correlated electron materials, superconductivity and magnetic order often occur in close proximity - small changes of doping, pressure or chemical composition can turn a material magnetically ordered or superconducting. Understanding the relation between the two is believed to be key for understanding the physics of unconventional superconductivity in these materials. Among the parent compounds of the iron-based superconductors, the magnetic structure of FeTe is unique -- not only is it rotated by 45° with respect to the magnetic structure found in the iron-pnictide materials, it is also not connected to a nesting vector between different sheets of the Fermi surface. At increased excess iron concentrations y, the magnetic structure becomes incommensurate. ! Here, we report real space imaging of the magnetic structure in Fe1+yTe by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. Our data confirm that in the monoclinic phase, the modulation is truly unidirectional, separated in different domains, whereas at higher excess iron concentration y>0.12, in the orthorhombic phase, a transition to a phase with coexistence of stripes in both directions within a single domain is observed, locally reminiscent of a plaquette order. Temperature dependent measurements show that the magnetic contrast disappears on the scale of the magnetostructural phase transition found in the bulk. We demonstrate preparation of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic tips on FeTe. Our results highlight the applicability of spin-polarized STM to study magnetic order in strongly correlated electron materials.
© Copyright 2024 ExpyDoc