Nanoscale decoupling of electronic nematicity and structural anisotropy in FeSe thin films

Ren, Zheng; Li, Hong; Zhao, He; Sharma, Shrinkhala; Wang, Ziqiang; Zeljkovic, Ilija

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20150-y

Title: Nanoscale decoupling of electronic nematicity and structural anisotropy in FeSe thin films

Journal Article · Mon Jan 04 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20150-y· OSTI ID:1817065

Ren, Zheng ^[1];

^[1]; Zhao, He ^[1]; Sharma, Shrinkhala ^[1]; Wang, Ziqiang ^[1];

^[1]

Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics

In a material prone to a nematic instability, anisotropic strain in principle provides a preferred symmetry-breaking direction for the electronic nematic state to follow. This is consistent with experimental observations, where electronic nematicity and structural anisotropy typically appear hand-in-hand. In this work, we discover that electronic nematicity can be locally decoupled from the underlying structural anisotropy in strain-engineered iron-selenide (FeSe) thin films. We use heteroepitaxial molecular beam epitaxy to grow FeSe with a nanoscale network of modulations that give rise to spatially varying strain. We map local anisotropic strain by analyzing scanning tunneling microscopy topographs, and visualize electronic nematic domains from concomitant spectroscopic maps. While the domains form so that the energy of nemato-elastic coupling is minimized, we observe distinct regions where electronic nematic ordering fails to flip direction, even though the underlying structural anisotropy is locally reversed. The findings point towards a nanometer-scale stiffness of the nematic order parameter.

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Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Grant/Contract Number:: FG02-99ER45747; DMR-1654041; N66001-17-1-4051

OSTI ID:: 1817065

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Vol. 12, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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