Nanowerk April 23, 2022
Within the Transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMD) family, iridium ditelluride (IrTe2) is ideally suited for the systematic study of competing factors that can affect a material’s electronic properties. An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Sandford University, South Korea, Egypt) synthesized bilayer and monolayer IrTe2 samples and characterized their atomic and electronic structures. The analysis of the material showed that monolayer IrTe2 develops a large band gap that’s an order of magnitude larger than is typical for TMD systems, transforming the material into an insulator through the removal of a single layer. In IrTe2, charge-density waves can also have a reverse effect on the lattice, nudging atoms in particular directions. The researchers concluded that the experimentally supported strong dimer ground state explains the abrupt appearance of the large band gap in the monolayer’s electronic structure. The findings provide important insights into the subtle balance of interactions having similar energy scales that occurs in the absence of strong interlayer coupling…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Characterization of the epitaxial grown ML IrTe2. Credit: Nature Communications volume 13, Article number: 906 (2022)Â