Experimental observation of frustration and large anomalous Nernst effect in metallo-molecular spin Kondo lattice interfaces
Servet Ozdemir, Matthew Rogers, Conor J. McCluskey, Raymond G. McQuaid, Mannan Ali, Gavin Burnell, Joseph Barker, B J Hickey, Oscar Cespedes
Published: 2025/10/6
Abstract
Frustration in Kondo spin lattice systems has led to the emergence of both spin liquids that could be chiral and strange metals that deviate from Fermi liquid behaviour when not in their antiferromagnetic ground state. In two dimensions (2D), where deviations from bulk systems are expected, Kondo spin lattice emergence have recently been observed in van der Waals systems. Metallo-molecular interfaces of supramolecular lattices have also been suggested as an alternative 2D Kondo spin lattice system where a single-ion Kondo effect as well as an inter spin-site Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) coupling has been demonstrated in scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) studies. Here, going beyond ultrahigh vacuum STS studies on metallo-molecular interfaces, we report a metastable frustrated antiferromagnetic state, with ultra-high spin freezing temperatures (T_f), ranging from 240 K to 300 K on the interfaces of highly textured Pt(111) and Pt(111)/Co films with organic molecules grown in ultra-high vacuum 10^(-10) mbar. In the vicinity of the spin-freezing transition, we measure a large anomalous Nernst effect (ANE) in the Pt/Co/molecular heterostructure, with a Nernst coefficient of at least 3 microV per K. Our results suggest a 2D metallo-molecular Kondo spin lattice with high temperature quantum correlations where an ANE beyond magnetisation is manifested around room temperature.