Engineering the Kondo state in two-dimensional semiconducting phosphorene

Abstract

Correlated interaction between dilute localized impurity electrons and the itinerant host conduction electrons in metals gives rise to the conventional many-body Kondo effect below sufficiently low temperature. In sharp contrast to these conventional Kondo systems, we report an intrinsic, robust, and high-temperature Kondo state in two-dimensional semiconducting phosphorene. While absorbed at a thermodynamically stable lattice defect, Cr impurity triggers an electronic phase transition in phosphorene to provide conduction electrons, which strongly interact with the localized moment generated at the Cr site. These manifest into the intrinsic Kondo state, where the impurity moment is quenched in multiple stages and at temperatures in the 40-200 K range. Further, along with a much smaller extension of the Kondo cloud, the predicted Kondo state is shown to be robust under uniaxial strain and layer thickness, which greatly simplifies its future experimental realization. We predict the present study will open up new avenues in Kondo physics and trigger further theoretical and experimental studies