Electronic properties of monolayer copper selenide with one-dimensional moiré patterns

Abstract

Strain engineering is a vital way to manipulate the electronic properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials. As a typical representative of transition metal mono-chalcogenides (TMMs), a honeycomb CuSe monolayer features with one-dimensional (1D) moiré patterns owing to the uniaxial strain along one of three equivalent orientations of Cu(111) substrates. Here, by combining low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/S) experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we systematically investigate the electronic properties of the strained CuSe monolayer on the Cu(111) substrate. Our results show the semiconducting feature of CuSe monolayer with a band gap of 1.28 eV and the 1D periodical modulation of electronic properties by the 1D moiré patterns. Except for the uniaxially strained CuSe monolayer, we observed domain boundary and line defects in the CuSe monolayer, where the biaxial-strain and strain-free conditions can be investigated respectively. STS measurements for the three different strain regions show that the first peak in conduction band will move downward with the increasing strain. DFT calculations based on the three CuSe atomic models with different strain inside reproduced the peak movement. The present findings not only enrich the fundamental comprehension toward the influence of strain on electronic properties at 2D limit, but also offer the benchmark for the development of 2D semiconductor materials.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

CuSe monolayer / scanning tunneling microscopy / strain / electronic bandgap / electronic property

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Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary materials are available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-022-1211-0 and https://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-022-1211-0 and are accessible for authorized users.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 62271238 and 61901200), the Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (Nos. 202201AT070078, 202101AV070008, 202101AW070010, and 202101AU070043), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB30000000), the Analysis and Testing Foundation of KUST (2021T20170056), and the Dongguan Innovation Research Team Program. Numerical computations were performed on Hefei advanced computing center.

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