Strain Tunable Semimetal–Topological-Insulator Transition in Monolayer 1TWTe2

Chenxiao Zhao, Mengli Hu, Jin Qin, Bing Xia, Canhua Liu, Shiyong Wang, DanDan Guan, Yaoyi Li, Hao Zheng, Junwei Liu, and Jinfeng Jia
Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 046801 – Published 24 July 2020
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Abstract

A quantum spin hall insulator is manifested by its conducting edge channels that originate from the nontrivial topology of the insulating bulk states. Monolayer 1TWTe2 exhibits this quantized edge conductance in transport measurements, but because of its semimetallic nature, the coherence length is restricted to around 100 nm. To overcome this restriction, we propose a strain engineering technique to tune the electronic structure, where either a compressive strain along the a axis or a tensile strain along the b axis can drive 1TWTe2 into an full gap insulating phase. A combined study of molecular beam epitaxy and in situ scanning tunneling microscopy or spectroscopy then confirmed such a phase transition. Meanwhile, the topological edge states were found to be very robust in the presence of strain.

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  • Received 3 January 2020
  • Accepted 22 June 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.046801

© 2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Chenxiao Zhao1,*, Mengli Hu2,*, Jin Qin1, Bing Xia1, Canhua Liu1,3,4, Shiyong Wang1,3,4, DanDan Guan1, Yaoyi Li1,3,4, Hao Zheng1,3,4, Junwei Liu2,†, and Jinfeng Jia1,3,4,‡

  • 1Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 2Department of Physics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
  • 3Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 4CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • liuj@ust.hk
  • jfjia@sjtu.edu.cn

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Issue

Vol. 125, Iss. 4 — 24 July 2020

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