Moiré Tuning of Spin Excitations: Individual Fe Atoms on MoS2/Au(111)

Abstract

Magnetic adatoms on properly designed surfaces constitute exquisite systems for addressing, controlling, and manipulating single quantum spins. Here, we show that monolayers of MoS2 on a Au(111) surface provide a versatile platform for controllably tuning the coupling between adatom spins and substrate electrons. Even for equivalent adsorption sites with respect to the atomic MoS2 lattice, we observe that Fe adatoms exhibit behaviors ranging from pure spin excitations, characteristic of negligible exchange and dominant single-ion anisotropy, to a fully developed Kondo resonance, indicating strong exchange and negligible single-ion anisotropy. This tunability emerges from a moiré structure of MoS2 on Au(111) in conjunction with pronounced many-body renormalizations. We also find striking spectral variations in the immediate vicinity of the Fe atoms, which we explain by quantum interference reflecting the formation of Fe-S hybrid states despite the nominally inert nature of the substrate. Our work establishes monolayer MoS2 as a tuning layer for adjusting the quantum spin properties over an extraordinarily broad parameter range. The considerable variability can be exploited for quantum spin manipulations.