Tunnelling and point contact spectroscopy of the density of states in quasicrystalline alloys

Abstract

Point contact and tunnelling experiments performed at low temperatures were used to study the electronic behaviour of the icosahedral quasicrystalline alloys AlPdRe, AlCuFe, and AlPdMn. With samples of high quality we observed at low temperatures a zero-bias anomaly that we related to the decrease of the electronic density of states (DOS) due to the electron-electron interaction. This interaction tends to diminish the DOS at the Fermi level and can be seen as the energy pseudogap of the alloy. Our experiments indicate that the DOS is strongly modified near and consists of a spiky feature in a broad pseudogap, with the width of the feature of the order of 100 meV or even larger for the AlPdRe, whereas it is as small as 20-22 meV for Al-Cu-Fe and 17-20 meV for Al-Pd-Mn. The broad pseudogap has widths larger than 400 meV for AlPdRe, whereas for AlCuFe it is about 80-90 meV and for AlPdMn it is of the order of 110-122 meV. The studies were performed on three samples of the compositions , , and . The junctions were of the types alloy-Au(In, Al) and alloy-insulator-Au(In, Al), and were studied at different temperatures between that of liquid nitrogen and 2 K, and even to 400 mK for the AlCuFe alloy.