Epitaxial Growth and Structural Properties of Bi(110) Thin Films on TiSe2 Substrates

• Published in: Journal of physical chemistry. C Vol. 123; no. 22; pp. 13637 - 13641
• Main Authors: Dong, Xu, Li, Yongkai, Li, Ji, Peng, Xianglin, Qiao, Lu, Chen, Dongyun, Yang, Huixia, Xiong, Xiaolu, Wang, Qinsheng, Li, Xiang, Duan, Junxi, Han, Junfeng, Xiao, Wende
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 06.06.2019
• ISSN: 1932-7447; 1932-7455
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01923

We report the growth and structural properties of Bi thin films on TiSe2 substrates by using a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope. Extended Bi(110) thin films are formed on the TiSe2 substrates and adopt a distorted black-phosphorus structure at room temperature (RT). The diagonal of the Bi(110) rectangular unit cell is parallel to the close-packed direction of the top-layer Se atoms of the TiSe2 substrates, resulting in the formation of a stripe-shaped commensurate moiré pattern with a periodicity of ∼38.5 Å at RT. Meanwhile, the charge density wave phase transition of the TiSe2 substrate and the different coefficients of thermal expansion of Bi(110) and TiSe2 lead to the formation of a quasi-hexagonal incommensurate moiré pattern with a periodicity of 14.5 Å at 77 K. In particular, the combination of domains with twisting angles of 30° or 60° results in the formation of various domain boundaries. Our work is very helpful for understanding and tuning the structural and electronic properties of epitaxial Bi(110) thin films.