Atomic and Electronic Structures of Ultra-thin Epitaxially Grown Te Film

Tellurene has been proposed as a new two-dimensional material whose properties can be tuned from monolayer to few layer thickness. Recently, experimental observation of layered structured Te films on graphite or graphene substrates have been reported. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments reveal β phase in Te films which are composed of parallel arranged helical Te chains with the 1×1 reconstruction. However, the predicted β to α phase transition has not been observed. Moreover, the layer-dependent band structure and the detail morphology of Te film remain unclear. By using the combination of STM and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we investigate molecule beam epitaxy (MBE) grown ultra-thin Te films on graphite. The atomic structure is similar to that reported earlier. However, upon annealing, the surface changes and generates one-dimensional stripes. These stripes showed different moiré patters and different band gap from the normal Te film. Both ARPES and Scanning tunneling spectroscopy show layer-dependent electronic structures.