2025/06/19 by Eek, Lumen, Westende, Esra D. van 't, Klaassen, Dennis J. +3
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #2D Materials and Applications #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphene research and applications #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Topological Materials and Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.16158
openalex publication_date 2025/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Reversible, all-electric control of symmetry-protected zero-dimensional modes has been a long-standing goal. In buckled honeycomb lattices, a perpendicular field couples to the staggered sublattice potential providing the required handle. We combine scanning tunneling microscopy and tight-binding theory to switch zero-dimensional topological end states reversibly on and off in ultranarrow germanene nanoribbons by tuning the electric field in the tunnel junction. Increasing the field switches off the end modes of topological two-hexagon wide ribbons, while the same field switches on zero-dimensional states in initially trivial three- and four-hexagon wide ribbons. This atomic scale platform realizes a proof-of-principle for a zero-dimensional topological field effect device, opening a path for ultrasmall memory, controllable qubits, and neuromorphic architectures.