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Tellurium (Te) films with monolayer and few-layer thickness are obtained by molecular beam epitaxy on a graphene/6H-SiC(0001) substrate and investigated by in situ scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS). We reveal that the Te films are composed of parallel-arranged helical Te chains flat-lying on the graphene surface, exposing the (1 × 1) facet of (101̅0) of the bulk crystal. The band gap of Te films increases monotonically with decreasing thickness, reaching the near-infrared band for the monolayer Te. An explicit band bending at the edge between the monolayer Te and graphene substrate is visualized. With the thickness controlled in the atomic scale, Te films show potential applications of electronics and optoelectronics.
Huang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.