Impurity-Mediated Early Condensation of a Charge Density Wave in an Atomic Wire Array.

We directly show how impurity atoms induce the condensation of a representative electronic phase, the charge density wave (CDW) phase, in atomic scale with scanning tunneling microscopy. Oxygen impurity atoms on the self-assembled metallic atomic wire array on a silicon crystal condense the CDW locally above the pristine transition temperature. More interestingly, the CDW along the wires is induced not by a single atomic impurity but by the cooperation of multiple impurities.