Stanene: A good platform for topological insulator and topological superconductor

Two dimensional (2D) topological insulators (TIs) and topological superconductors (TSCs) have been intensively studied for recent years due to their great potential for dissipationless electron transportation and fault-tolerant quantum computing, respectively. Here we focus on stanene, the tin analogue of graphene, to give a brief review of their development as a candidate for both 2D TI and TSC. Stanene is proposed to be a TI with a large gap of 0.3 eV, and its topological properties are sensitive to various factors, e.g., the lattice constants, chemical functionalization and layer thickness, which offer various methods for phase tunning. Experimentally, the inverted gap and edge states are observed recently, which are strong evidences for TI. In addition, stanene is also predicted to be a time reversal invariant TSC by breaking inversion symmetry, supporting helical Majorana edge modes. The layer-dependent superconductivity of stanene is recently confirmed by both transport and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. This review gives a detailed introduction to stanene and its topological properties and some prospects are also discussed.     

Surface Structure and Reconstructions of HgTe(111) Surfaces

Hg Te(111) surface is comprehensively studied by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy(STS).In addition to th√e prim√itive(1 × 1)√ hexagonal lattice,six reconstructed surface structures are observed:(2 × 2),2 × 1,4 × 1,3 ×(1/2)3,2(1/2)2 × 2 and (1/2)11 × 2.The(2 × 2) reconstructed lattice maintains the primitive hexagonal symmetry,whi√le the lattices of the other five reconstructions are rectangular.Moreover,the topographic features of the3 ×(1/2)3 reconstruction are bias dependent,indicating that they have both topographic and electronic origins.The STSs obtained at different reconstructed surfaces show a universal dip feature with size ～100 mV,which may be attributed to the surface distortion.Our results reveal the atomic structure and complex reconstructions of the cleaved Hg Te(111) surfaces,which paves the way to understand the rich properties of Hg Te crystal.     

Charge Density Wave States in 2H-MoTe_2 Revealed by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

2H-and 1T′-phase monolayer MoTe_2 films on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite are studied using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy(STM/STS).The phase transition of MoTe_2 can be controlled by a postgrowth annealing process,and the intermediate state during the phase transition is directly observed by STM.For 2H-MoTe2,inversion domain boundaries are presented as bright lines at high sample bias,but as dark lines at lower sample bias.The dI/dV mappings reveal the distinct distributions of electronic states between domain boundaries and interiors of domains.It sihould be noted that a 2×2 periodic structure is clearlfy discernable inside the domains,where the STS measurement shows a small dip of size～150 meV at the vicinity of the Fermi level,indicating that the 2×2 periodic structure may be an incommensurate charge density wave.Moreover,a4×4 periodic structure appears in 2H-MoTe_2 grown at a higher substrate temperature.