Molecular beam epitaxy growth and strain-induced bandgap of monolayer 1T′-WTe₂on SrTiO₃(001)

A monolayer 1T′-WTe2 film is grown on SrTiO3(001) with in-plane tensile strain. A height of ∼0.7 nm, obvious charge transfer, and incommensurate charge fluctuations in 1T′-WTe2 suggest strong coupling to the STO substrate. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy on the surface reveals that a large energy gap opens at the Fermi level with nearly zero conductance. The opened energy gap decreases with the increase in the WTe2 island size. The lack of the metallic edge state on monolayer 1T′-WTe2/SrTiO3(001)indicates the absence of the quantum spin Hall (QSH) state. Our study here demonstrates that the energy gap of monolayer 1T′-WTe2 can be tuned by lattice strain and illustrates the importance of interface coupling to realize the metallic edge state and QSH in monolayer 1T′-WTe2.