Tunable energy and mass renormalization from homothetic Quantum dot arrays

TL;DR

This study demonstrates tunable energy and mass renormalization effects in homothetic quantum dot arrays, revealing significant surface state modifications due to metal-organic overlayer interactions, confirmed by experimental and theoretical methods.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental observation of band structure renormalization in scalable metal-organic nanoporous networks, linking it to substrate interactions.

Findings

Downward energy shifts of confined states

Lowering of effective masses and tiny band gaps

Confirmation via photoemission and tunneling spectroscopy

Abstract

Quantum dot arrays in the form of molecular nanoporous networks are renown for modifying the electronic surface properties through quantum confinement. Here we show that, compared to the pristine surface state, the fundamental energy of the confined states can exhibit downward shifts accompanied by a lowering of the effective masses simultaneous to the appearance of tiny gaps at the Brillouin zone boundaries. We observed these effects by angle resolved photoemission for two self-assembled homothetic (scalable) Co-coordinated metal-organic networks. Complementary scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements confirmed these findings. Electron plane wave expansion simulations and density functional theory calculations provide insight into the nature of this phenomenon, which we assign to metal-organic overlayer-substrate interactions in the form of adatom-substrate hybridization. The absence to date of the experimental band structure resulting from single adatom metal-coordinated nanoporous networks has precluded the observation of the significant surface state renormalization reported here, which we infer are general of low interacting and well-defined adatom arrays.