A magnetically-induced Coulomb gap in graphene due to electron-electron interactions

Vdovin, Evgenii E.; Greenaway, Mark T.; Khanin, Yurii N.; Morozov, Sergey V.; Makarovsky, Oleg; Patanè, Amalia; Mishchenko, Artem; Slizovskiy, Sergey; Fal’ko, Vladimir I.; Geim, Andre K.; Novoselov, Kostya S.; Eaves, Laurence

Abstract

Insights into the fundamental properties of graphene’s Dirac-Weyl fermions have emerged from studies of electron tunnelling transistors in which an atomically thin layer of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is sandwiched between two layers of high purity graphene. Here, we show that when a single defect is present within the hBN tunnel barrier, it can inject electrons into the graphene layers and its sharply defined energy level acts as a high resolution spectroscopic probe of electron-electron interactions in graphene. We report a magnetic field dependent suppression of the tunnel current flowing through a single defect below temperatures of ~2 K. This is attributed to the formation of a magnetically-induced Coulomb gap in the spectral density of electrons tunnelling into graphene due to electron-electron interactions.

Citation

Vdovin, E. E., Greenaway, M. T., Khanin, Y. N., Morozov, S. V., Makarovsky, O., Patanè, A., Mishchenko, A., Slizovskiy, S., Fal’ko, V. I., Geim, A. K., Novoselov, K. S., & Eaves, L. (2023). A magnetically-induced Coulomb gap in graphene due to electron-electron interactions. Communications Physics, 6, Article 159. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-023-01277-y

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 19, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jun 30, 2023
• Publication Date: Jun 30, 2023
• Deposit Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Journal: Communications Physics
• Electronic ISSN: 2399-3650
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Article Number: 159
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-023-01277-y
• Keywords: General Physics and Astronomy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/22713984
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Vdovin, E. E., Greenaway, M. T., Khanin, Y. N., Morozov, S. V., Makarovsky, O., Patanè, A., …Eaves, L. (2023). A magnetically-induced Coulomb gap in graphene due to electron-electron interactions. Communications Physics, 6, 159, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-023-01277-y