Investigation of Electronic States across NbTe₂ CDW Domain Boundaries

NbTe₂ is a layered transition metal dichalcogenide which exhibits charge density waves (CDWs) and superconductivity in the bulk. Previous scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy experiments suggested that Fermi-surface nesting and reciprocal lattice reconstruction are important in the formation of CDWs in NbTe₂. These experiments focused on spectroscopy of pristine regions. We will present low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments examining the 3x1 CDW in NbTe₂ at 10K. We found a crystalline step and multiple neighboring 60^º and 120^º CDW domain boundaries. We examined the electronic structure across these domain boundaries and in neighboring domains using scanning tunneling spectroscopy. We observed zig-zag features in the dI/dV maps over the domain boundaries for tip bias of 300mV, as compared to 150mV bias maps. These and future experiments will help elucidate CDW domain formation and interlayer coupling in NbTe₂.