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Research Article

Colossal structural distortion and interlayer-coupling suppression in a van der Waals crystal induced by atomic vacancies

Liangguang Jia1,§, Fei Gao2,§, Yu Zhang1,3,§( ), Yaoyao Chen1, Baofei Hou1, Zeping Huang1, Quanzhen Zhang1, Xu Wu1, Liwei Liu1, Shiwu Gao4, Mads Brandbyge2, Hong-Jun Gao5, Yeliang Wang1( )
School of Integrated Circuits and Electronics, MIIT Key Laboratory for Low-Dimensional Quantum Structure and Devices, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Center for Nanostructured Graphene, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark
Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193, China
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

§ Liangguang Jia, Fei Gao, and Yu Zhang contributed equally to this work.

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Graphical Abstract

Atomic vacancies in NbSe2 generate colossal structural distortions at the nanoscale, thus efficiently suppressing the interlayer coupling

Abstract

The interlayer coupling in van der Waals (vdW) crystals has substantial effects on the performance of materials. However, an in-depth understanding of the microscopic mechanism on the defect-modulated interlayer coupling is often elusive, owing partly to the challenge of atomic-scale characterization. Here we report the native Se-vacancies in a charge-density-wave metal 2H-NbSe2, as well as their influence on the local atomic configurations and interlayer coupling. Our low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements, complemented by density functional theory calculations, indicate that the Se-vacancies in few-layer NbSe2 can generate obvious atomic distortions due to the Jahn–Teller effect, thus breaking the rotational symmetry on the nanoscale. Moreover, these vacancies can locally generate an in-gap state in single-layer NbSe2, and more importantly, lead to a colossal suppression of interlayer coupling in the bilayer system. Our results provide clear structural and electronic fingerprints around the vacancies in vdW crystals, paving the way for developing functional vdW devices.

Keywords

atomic vacanciesstructural distortioninterlayer couplingscanning tunneling microscopy

Electronic Supplementary Material

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Nano Research
Volume 16 Issue 4,
April 2023
Pages 5715-5720
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-022-5203-8
Cite this article:
Jia L, Gao F, Zhang Y, et al. Colossal structural distortion and interlayer-coupling suppression in a van der Waals crystal induced by atomic vacancies. Nano Research, 2023, 16(4): 5715-5720. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5203-8
Topics:
Scanning tunneling microscopyThin films

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Received: 24 August 2022
Revised: 06 October 2022
Accepted: 13 October 2022
Published: 29 November 2022
© Tsinghua University Press 2022
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