2021/09/23 by Jiawei Yu, Kebin Xiao, Yonghao Yuan +8 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03535
Comments are welcome
arxiv created 2021/09/23 · arxiv updated 2022/02/23
We report on in situ low-temperature (4 K) scanning tunneling microscope measurements of atomic and electronic structures of the cleaved surfaces of an alkali-based kagome metal RbV3Sb5 single crystals. We find that the dominant pristine surface exhibits Rb-1x1 structure, in which a unique unidirectional √(3)a0 charge order is discovered. As the sample temperature slightly rises, Rb-√(3)x1 and Rb-√(3)x√(3) reconstructions form due to desorption of surface Rb atoms. Our conductance mapping results demonstrate that Rb desorption not only gives rise to hole doping, but also renormalizes the electronic band structures. Surprisingly, we find a ubiquitous gap opening near the Fermi level in tunneling spectra on all the surfaces despite their large differences of hole-carrier concentration, indicating an orbital-selective band reconstruction in RbV3Sb5.