Luttinger liquid behaviour of Li0.9Mo6O17 studied by scanning tunnelling microscopy

Scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) was used to study the Luttinger liquid behaviour of the purple bronze Li(0.9)Mo(6)O(17) in the temperature range 5 K < T < 300 K. In the entire temperature range the suppression of the density of states at the Fermi energy can be fitted very well by a model describing the tunnelling into a Luttinger liquid at ambient temperature. The power-law exponent extracted from these fits reveals a significant increase above 200 K. It changes from α = 0.6 at low temperature to α = 1.0 at room temperature.