Kondo impurities in nanotubes: the importance of being "in"

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the position of transition metal impurities inside or outside carbon nanotubes affects Kondo temperatures and conductance anomalies, revealing significant differences based on impurity location and symmetry changes.

Contribution

It introduces a combined density functional and numerical renormalization group approach to analyze impurity effects in nanotubes, highlighting the impact of impurity placement on Kondo phenomena.

Findings

Inside impurities show large, radius-dependent Kondo temperatures.

Outside impurities exhibit tiny, less detectable Kondo effects.

Impurity position drastically alters magnetic orbital symmetry and conductance behavior.

Abstract

Transition metal impurities will yield zero bias anomalies in the conductance of well contacted metallic carbon nanotubes, but Kondo temperatures and geometry dependences have not been anticipated so far. Applying the density functional plus numerical renormalization group approach of Lucignano \textit{et al.} to Co and Fe impurities in (4,4) and (8,8) nanotubes, we discover a huge difference of behaviour between outside versus inside adsorption of the impurity. The predicted Kondo temperatures and zero bias anomalies, tiny outside the nanotube, turn large and strongly radius dependent inside, owing to a change of symmetry of the magnetic orbital. Observation of this Kondo effect should open the way to a host of future experiments.