The Kondo effect of these single objects represents a model system to study electron correlations, which are nowadays of importance in relation to the emerging field of spin electronics, also known as spintronics, where chemical elements with partially filled d or f shells play a central role. Also of particular interest to spintronics is the interaction of single Kondo impurities with ferromagnetic leads or with other magnetic impurities. A Kondo impurity is in fact sensitive to its magnetic environment as the ASK resonance is usually split into two resonances in the presence of magnetic interactions. To some extent, the ASK resonance acts as a two-fold degenerate energy level of an atom which undergoes a Zeeman splitting in the presence of an effective magnetic field. Conversely, the detection of a Zeeman splitting indicates the existence of a magnetic field. In a QD, the coupling of the QD to the two leads is very weak in general, and the Kondo resonance is in the range of a few meV. Many studies focusing on magnetic interaction have been carried out on QDs, due to the high control that can be extended to the ASK resonance and its low energy range, allowing to split the resonance with a magnetic field of 10 T. Similar work has also been carried out in single-molecule or lithographically-defined devices. Although STM is an ideal tool to study the Kondo effect of single atoms, there is still a strong lack of experimental studies concerning atoms in the presence of magnetic interactions. This is partly due to the stronger impurity-metal hybridization compared to QDs, which places the ASK width in the range of 10 meV. An effective magnetic field of 100 T would be needed to split the resonance. The present Thesis is devoted precisely at studying the interaction between a single Kondo impurity with its magnetic environment through STM. A new strategy is adopted herecompared to former studies of this kind. Firstly, we contact a single-magnetic atom on a surface with a STM tip thereby eliminating the vacuum barrier. Secondly, we use ferromagnetic tips. The contact with a single atom allows probing the influence of ferromagnetism on the Kondo impurity i. e. its ASK resonance. But most importantly, the contact geometry produces sufficiently high current densities compared to the tunneling regime, so that the ASK resonance becomes sensitive to the presence of a spin-polarized current. This constitutes the first atomic scale detection of a spin-polarized current with a single Kondo impurity.
Kondo effect and detection of a spin-polarized current in a quantum point contact