IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v16y2025i1d10.1038_s41467-025-59007-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Realization of fractional-layer transition metal dichalcogenides

Author

Listed:
  • Ya-Xin Zhao

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Heng Jin

    (Beijing Normal University
    Beijing Computational Science Research Center)

  • Zi-Yi Han

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Xinlei Zhao

    (Tsinghua University)

  • Ya-Ning Ren

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Ruo-Han Zhang

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Xiao-Feng Zhou

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

  • Wenhui Duan

    (Tsinghua University
    Tsinghua University
    Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information)

  • Bing Huang

    (Beijing Normal University
    Beijing Computational Science Research Center)

  • Yu Zhang

    (Beijing Institute of Technology)

  • Lin He

    (Beijing Normal University
    Ministry of Education)

Abstract

Layered van der Waals transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), generally composed of three atomic X-M-X planes in each layer (M = transition metal, X = chalcogen), provide versatile platforms for exploring diverse quantum phenomena. In each MX2 layer, the M-X bonds are predominantly covalent in nature and, as a result, the cleavage of TMDC crystals normally occurs between the layers. Here we report the controllable realization of fractional-layer WTe2 via an in-situ scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) tip manipulation technique. By applying STM tip pulses, hundreds of the topmost Te atoms are removed to form a nanoscale monolayer Te pit in the 1 T′-WTe2, thus realizing a 2/3-layer WTe2 film. Such a configuration undergoes a spontaneous atomic reconstruction, yielding a unidirectional charge density redistribution with the wavevector and geometry quite distinct from that of pristine 1 T′-WTe2. Our results expand the conventional understanding of the TMDCs and are expected to stimulate further research on the structure and properties of fractional-layer TMDCs.

Suggested Citation

  • Ya-Xin Zhao & Heng Jin & Zi-Yi Han & Xinlei Zhao & Ya-Ning Ren & Ruo-Han Zhang & Xiao-Feng Zhou & Wenhui Duan & Bing Huang & Yu Zhang & Lin He, 2025. "Realization of fractional-layer transition metal dichalcogenides," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59007-7
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59007-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59007-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-025-59007-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Camiel Efferen & Jan Berges & Joshua Hall & Erik Loon & Stefan Kraus & Arne Schobert & Tobias Wekking & Felix Huttmann & Eline Plaar & Nico Rothenbach & Katharina Ollefs & Lucas Machado Arruda & Nick , 2021. "A full gap above the Fermi level: the charge density wave of monolayer VS2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Lang Peng & Yuan Yuan & Gang Li & Xing Yang & Jing-Jing Xian & Chang-Jiang Yi & You-Guo Shi & Ying-Shuang Fu, 2017. "Observation of topological states residing at step edges of WTe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-7, December.
    3. Jiadong Zhou & Junhao Lin & Xiangwei Huang & Yao Zhou & Yu Chen & Juan Xia & Hong Wang & Yu Xie & Huimei Yu & Jincheng Lei & Di Wu & Fucai Liu & Qundong Fu & Qingsheng Zeng & Chuang-Han Hsu & Changli , 2018. "A library of atomically thin metal chalcogenides," Nature, Nature, vol. 556(7701), pages 355-359, April.
    4. Quanzhen Zhang & Wen-Yu He & Yu Zhang & Yaoyao Chen & Liangguang Jia & Yanhui Hou & Hongyan Ji & Huixia Yang & Teng Zhang & Liwei Liu & Hong-Jun Gao & Thomas A. Jung & Yeliang Wang, 2024. "Quantum spin liquid signatures in monolayer 1T-NbSe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Pranab Kumar Das & D. Di Sante & I. Vobornik & J. Fujii & T. Okuda & E. Bruyer & A. Gyenis & B. E. Feldman & J. Tao & R. Ciancio & G. Rossi & M. N. Ali & S. Picozzi & A. Yadzani & G. Panaccione & R. J, 2016. "Layer-dependent quantum cooperation of electron and hole states in the anomalous semimetal WTe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-8, April.
    6. G. Algara-Siller & O. Lehtinen & F. C. Wang & R. R. Nair & U. Kaiser & H. A. Wu & A. K. Geim & I. V. Grigorieva, 2015. "Square ice in graphene nanocapillaries," Nature, Nature, vol. 519(7544), pages 443-445, March.
    7. Pranab Kumar Das & D. Di Sante & I. Vobornik & J. Fujii & T. Okuda & E. Bruyer & A. Gyenis & B. E. Feldman & J. Tao & R. Ciancio & G. Rossi & M. N. Ali & S. Picozzi & A. Yadzani & G. Panaccione & R. J, 2016. "Erratum: Layer-dependent quantum cooperation of electron and hole states in the anomalous semimetal WTe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-1, September.
    8. K. S. Vasu & E. Prestat & J. Abraham & J. Dix & R. J. Kashtiban & J. Beheshtian & J. Sloan & P. Carbone & M. Neek-Amal & S. J. Haigh & A. K. Geim & R. R. Nair, 2016. "Van der Waals pressure and its effect on trapped interlayer molecules," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-6, November.
    9. Yuan Huang & Yu-Hao Pan & Rong Yang & Li-Hong Bao & Lei Meng & Hai-Lan Luo & Yong-Qing Cai & Guo-Dong Liu & Wen-Juan Zhao & Zhang Zhou & Liang-Mei Wu & Zhi-Li Zhu & Ming Huang & Li-Wei Liu & Lei Liu &, 2020. "Universal mechanical exfoliation of large-area 2D crystals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-9, December.
    10. Fei Wang & Yang Zhang & Zhijie Wang & Haoxiong Zhang & Xi Wu & Changhua Bao & Jia Li & Pu Yu & Shuyun Zhou, 2023. "Ionic liquid gating induced self-intercalation of transition metal chalcogenides," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-8, December.
    11. Huiru Liu & Aolei Wang & Ping Zhang & Chen Ma & Caiyun Chen & Zijia Liu & Yi-Qi Zhang & Baojie Feng & Peng Cheng & Jin Zhao & Lan Chen & Kehui Wu, 2023. "Atomic-scale manipulation of single-polaron in a two-dimensional semiconductor," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    12. C. J. Butler & M. Yoshida & T. Hanaguri & Y. Iwasa, 2020. "Mottness versus unit-cell doubling as the driver of the insulating state in 1T-TaS2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-6, December.
    13. Ye-Heng Song & Zhen-Yu Jia & Dongqin Zhang & Xin-Yang Zhu & Zhi-Qiang Shi & Huaiqiang Wang & Li Zhu & Qian-Qian Yuan & Haijun Zhang & Ding-Yu Xing & Shao-Chun Li, 2018. "Observation of Coulomb gap in the quantum spin Hall candidate single-layer 1T’-WTe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-6, December.
    14. Zhen-Yu Liu & Heng Jin & Yao Zhang & Kai Fan & Ting-Fei Guo & Hao-Jun Qin & Lan-Fang Zhu & Lian-Zhi Yang & Wen-Hao Zhang & Bing Huang & Ying-Shuang Fu, 2024. "Charge-density wave mediated quasi-one-dimensional Kondo lattice in stripe-phase monolayer 1T-NbSe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-8, December.
    15. Max C. Lemme & Deji Akinwande & Cedric Huyghebaert & Christoph Stampfer, 2022. "2D materials for future heterogeneous electronics," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-5, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lutao Li & Junjie Yao & Juntong Zhu & Yuan Chen & Chen Wang & Zhicheng Zhou & Guoxiang Zhao & Sihan Zhang & Ruonan Wang & Jiating Li & Xiangyi Wang & Zheng Lu & Lingbo Xiao & Qiang Zhang & Guifu Zou, 2023. "Colloid driven low supersaturation crystallization for atomically thin Bismuth halide perovskite," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-8, December.
    2. Josef Schätz & Navin Nayi & Jonas Weber & Christoph Metzke & Sebastian Lukas & Jürgen Walter & Tim Schaffus & Fabian Streb & Eros Reato & Agata Piacentini & Annika Grundmann & Holger Kalisch & Michael, 2024. "Button shear testing for adhesion measurements of 2D materials," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. E. S. Bozin & M. Abeykoon & S. Conradson & G. Baldinozzi & P. Sutar & D. Mihailovic, 2023. "Crystallization of polarons through charge and spin ordering transitions in 1T-TaS2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Tomohito Sudare & Takuro Yamaguchi & Mizuki Ueda & Hiromasa Shiiba & Hideki Tanaka & Mongkol Tipplook & Fumitaka Hayashi & Katsuya Teshima, 2022. "Critical role of water structure around interlayer ions for ion storage in layered double hydroxides," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    5. Ziyi Han & Shengqiang Wu & Chun Huang & Fengyuan Xuan & Xiaocang Han & Yinfeng Long & Qing Zhang & Junxian Li & Yuan Meng & Lin Wang & Jiahuan Zhou & Wenping Hu & Jingsi Qiao & Dechao Geng & Xiaoxu Zh, 2024. "Atomically engineering interlayer symmetry operations of two-dimensional crystals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    6. Zhongqiang Chen & Hongsong Qiu & Xinjuan Cheng & Jizhe Cui & Zuanming Jin & Da Tian & Xu Zhang & Kankan Xu & Ruxin Liu & Wei Niu & Liqi Zhou & Tianyu Qiu & Yequan Chen & Caihong Zhang & Xiaoxiang Xi &, 2024. "Defect-induced helicity dependent terahertz emission in Dirac semimetal PtTe2 thin films," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    7. Cheng Hu & Jiajun Chen & Xianliang Zhou & Yufeng Xie & Xinyue Huang & Zhenghan Wu & Saiqun Ma & Zhichun Zhang & Kunqi Xu & Neng Wan & Yueheng Zhang & Qi Liang & Zhiwen Shi, 2024. "Collapse of carbon nanotubes due to local high-pressure from van der Waals encapsulation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-8, December.
    8. Hongjun Xu & Ke Jia & Yuan Huang & Fanqi Meng & Qinghua Zhang & Yu Zhang & Chen Cheng & Guibin Lan & Jing Dong & Jinwu Wei & Jiafeng Feng & Congli He & Zhe Yuan & Mingliang Zhu & Wenqing He & Caihua W, 2023. "Electrical detection of spin pumping in van der Waals ferromagnetic Cr2Ge2Te6 with low magnetic damping," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    9. Dmitry Ovchinnikov & Jiaqi Cai & Zhong Lin & Zaiyao Fei & Zhaoyu Liu & Yong-Tao Cui & David H. Cobden & Jiun-Haw Chu & Cui-Zu Chang & Di Xiao & Jiaqiang Yan & Xiaodong Xu, 2022. "Topological current divider in a Chern insulator junction," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-6, December.
    10. Heng Wang & Yuying Zhu & Zhonghua Bai & Zechao Wang & Shuxu Hu & Hong-Yi Xie & Xiaopeng Hu & Jian Cui & Miaoling Huang & Jianhao Chen & Ying Ding & Lin Zhao & Xinyan Li & Qinghua Zhang & Lin Gu & X. J, 2023. "Prominent Josephson tunneling between twisted single copper oxide planes of Bi2Sr2-xLaxCuO6+y," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    11. Felix Kohler & Olivier Pierre-Louis & Dag Kristian Dysthe, 2022. "Crystal growth in confinement," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    12. Longlong Yang & Yu Yuan & Bowen Fu & Jingnan Yang & Danjie Dai & Shushu Shi & Sai Yan & Rui Zhu & Xu Han & Hancong Li & Zhanchun Zuo & Can Wang & Yuan Huang & Kuijuan Jin & Qihuang Gong & Xiulai Xu, 2023. "Revealing broken valley symmetry of quantum emitters in WSe2 with chiral nanocavities," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    13. Hao-Ting Chin & Jiri Klimes & I-Fan Hu & Ding-Rui Chen & Hai-Thai Nguyen & Ting-Wei Chen & Shao-Wei Ma & Mario Hofmann & Chi-Te Liang & Ya-Ping Hsieh, 2021. "Ferroelectric 2D ice under graphene confinement," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, December.
    14. Bo Lin & Jian Jiang & Xiao Cheng Zeng & Lei Li, 2023. "Temperature-pressure phase diagram of confined monolayer water/ice at first-principles accuracy with a machine-learning force field," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    15. Kuichang Zuo & Xiang Zhang & Xiaochuan Huang & Eliezer F. Oliveira & Hua Guo & Tianshu Zhai & Weipeng Wang & Pedro J. J. Alvarez & Menachem Elimelech & Pulickel M. Ajayan & Jun Lou & Qilin Li, 2022. "Ultrahigh resistance of hexagonal boron nitride to mineral scale formation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    16. Hae Yeon Lee & Soumya Sarkar & Kate Reidy & Abinash Kumar & Julian Klein & Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi & James M. LeBeau & Frances M. Ross & Silvija Gradečak, 2022. "Strong and Localized Luminescence from Interface Bubbles Between Stacked hBN Multilayers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    17. Huimin Zhang & Basu Dev Oli & Qiang Zou & Xu Guo & Zhengfei Wang & Lian Li, 2023. "Visualizing symmetry-breaking electronic orders in epitaxial Kagome magnet FeSn films," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-8, December.
    18. Mailis Lounasvuori & Yangyunli Sun & Tyler S. Mathis & Ljiljana Puskar & Ulrich Schade & De-En Jiang & Yury Gogotsi & Tristan Petit, 2023. "Vibrational signature of hydrated protons confined in MXene interlayers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    19. Pavan Ravindra & Xavier R. Advincula & Christoph Schran & Angelos Michaelides & Venkat Kapil, 2024. "Quasi-one-dimensional hydrogen bonding in nanoconfined ice," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    20. C.-W. Chuang & T. Kawakami & K. Sugawara & K. Nakayama & S. Souma & M. Kitamura & K. Amemiya & K. Horiba & H. Kumigashira & G. Kremer & Y. Fagot-Revurat & D. Malterre & C. Bigi & F. Bertran & F. H. Ch, 2025. "Spin-valley coupling enhanced high-TC ferromagnetism in a non-van der Waals monolayer Cr2Se3 on graphene," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-8, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59007-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.