Epitaxial tellurene, phosphorene and MoTe₂ derivatives: from theoretical prediction to experimental observations

The family of 2D materials has been expanding continuously showing the diverse structural, symmetrical and electronic properties. Presently, there are two major categories of 2D materials experimentally obtainable: one is by exfoliation from bulk crystals (e.g., graphene) and the other is by epitaxial growth (e.g., silicene), and the latter is more versatile capable of synthesizing materials that would otherwise be not present naturally. In this presentation, some of our synergistic research efforts between theory, modeling, and experiments in the discoveries and further characterizations of a few members of the 2D materials family will be given. These include layered tellurium [1,2], metal-phosphorene network consisted of blue-phosphorene units linked by Au atoms [3,4], and a variational hexagonal phase of molybdenum telluride [5]. Each of these are achieved by molecular-beam epitaxy and their structural and electronic properties are characterized by scanning transmission electron microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy. These materials show potentials of various applications.

[1] Zhili Zhu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 046101 (2017)
[2] Jinglei Chen et al., Nanoscale 9, 15945 (2017)
[3] Jinpeng Xu et al., Phys. Rev. Mater. 1, 061002(R) (2017)
[4] Hao Tian et al., Matter, doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2019.08.001
[5] Junqiu Zhang et al., unpublished