Exfoliation of single layer BiTeI flakes

Fülöp, Bálint and Tajkov, Zoltán and Pető, János and Kun, Péter and Koltai, János and Oroszlány, László and Tóvári, Endre and Bordács, Sándor and Csonka, Szabolcs (2018) Exfoliation of single layer BiTeI flakes. 2D MATERIALS, 5 (3). 031013. ISSN 2053-1583

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Abstract

Spin orbit interaction is strongly enhanced in structures where a heavy element is embedded in an inversion asymmetric crystal field. A simple way for realizing such a setup is to take a single atomic layer of a heavy element and encapsulate it between two atomic layers of different elemental composition. BiTeI is a promising candidate for such a 2D crystal. In its bulk form BiTeI consists of loosely coupled three atom thick layers where a layer of high atomic number Bi are sandwiched between Te and I sheets. Despite considerable recent attention to bulk BiTeI due to its giant Rashba spin splitting, the isolation of a single layer remained elusive. In this work we report the first successful isolation and characterization of a single layer of BiTeI using a novel exfoliation technique on stripped gold. Our scanning probe studies and first principles calculations show that the fabricated 100 mu m sized BiTeI flakes are stable at ambient conditions. Giant Rashba splitting and spin-momentum locking of this new 2D crystal opens the way towards novel spintronic applications and synthetic topological heterostructures.

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