Fabrication of honeycomb AuTe monolayer with Dirac nodal line fermions

Abstract

Two-dimensional honeycomb lattices show great potential in the realization of Dirac nodal line fermions (DNLFs). Here, we successfully synthesized a gold telluride (AuTe) monolayer by direct tellurizing an Au(111) substrate. Low energy electron diffraction measurements reveal that it is (2×2) AuTe layer stacked onto (3×3) Au(111) substrate. Moreover, scanning tunneling microscopy images show that the AuTe layer has a honeycomb structure. Scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals that it is a single-atom layer. In addition, first-principles calculations demonstrate that the honeycomb AuTe monolayer exhibits Dirac nodal line features protected by mirror symmetry, which is validated by angle-resolved photoemission spectra. Our results establish that monolayer AuTe can be a good candidate to investigate 2D DNLFs and provides opportunities to realize high-speed low-dissipation devices.