Chiral Tellurium under Polarized Raman Spectroscopy: Crystal Orientation and Handedness

Beatriz Martín-García^a^,^b, Sergio Marras^c, Davide Spirito^d

^aCIC nanoGUNE, ES, Tolosa Hiribidea, 76, Donostia, Spain

^bIkerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao 48009, Spain.

^cMaterials Characterization Facility, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy

^dIHP – Leibniz-Institut für innovative Mikroelektronik, Germany

Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MATSUS)
Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)

#Chiral24 - Chiral Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Structure, and Properties

Barcelona, Spain, 2024 March 4th - 8th

Organizers: Dmitry Baranov and Sandrine Ithurria

Oral, Beatriz Martín-García, presentation 490
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2024.490
Publication date: 18th December 2023

The significant growth, development, and evolution of technologies such as optoelectronics and spintronics have always been accompanied by access to materials with specific and extraordinary properties. Among these materials, recently, chiral trigonal tellurium (Te) stands out since it exhibits electrical magneto-chiral anisotropy and spin polarization,[1-3] electrical conductivity anisotropy and intrinsic polarized photoresponse,[3-5 tunable Rashba spin-orbit coupling,[6] optical activity[7,8] and bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE)[9]. However, since its properties depend on its crystal structure, for its successful integration into devices and the development of new applications, it is key to determine its crystallographic orientation and handedness and its interaction with light. In this work, using bulk single crystals, we show how the response of Te to polarized light depends on the crystal orientation which has implications for optical and electrical transport studies. By linearly polarized Raman spectroscopy we identify different crystal faces (1 0 0), (1 1 0) and (0 0 1) and the orientation of the trigonal axis corresponding to the helical Te chains. Moreover, we correlate the angle-resolved experimental patterns derived from the data analysis with the symmetry of the crystal. Furthermore, by circularly polarized measurements, we highlight that only for incidence parallel to the trigonal axis, i.e. in the (0 0 1) face, is possible to determine the handedness. In this case, we observe different peaks shift for left- and right-handed crystals in the corresponding cross-helicity Raman spectra. We support our findings with X-ray diffraction and chirality- and orientation-sensitive chemical etching, providing robust insights for the analysis of chiral and low-dimensional materials.[10]

References:

[1] Calavalle, F.; Suárez-Rodríguez, M.; Martín-García, B.; Johansson, A.; Vaz, D. C.; Yang, H.; Maznichenko, I. V.; Ostanin, S.; Mateo-Alonso, A.; Chuvilin, A.; Mertig, I.; Gobbi, M.; Casanova, F.; Hueso, L. E. Gate-Tuneable and Chirality-Dependent Charge-to-Spin Conversion in Tellurium Nanowires. Nat. Mater. 2022, 21, 526–532.

[2] Rikken, G. L. J. A.; Avarvari, N. Strong Electrical Magnetochiral Anisotropy in Tellurium. Phys. Rev. B 2019, 99, 245153.

[3] Niu, C.; Qiu, G.; Wang, Y.; Tan, P.; Wang, M.; Jian, J.; Wang, H.; Wu, W.; Ye, P. D. Tunable Chirality-Dependent Nonlinear Electrical Responses in 2D Tellurium. Nano Lett. 2023, 23, 8445–8453.

[4] Tong, L.; Huang, X.; Wang, P.; Ye, L.; Peng, M.; An, L.; Sun, Q.; Zhang, Y.; Yang, G.; Li, Z.; Zhong, F.; Wang, F.; Wang, Y.; Motlag, M.; Wu, W.; Cheng, G. J.; Hu, W. Stable Mid-Infrared Polarization Imaging Based on Quasi-2D Tellurium at Room Temperature. Nat. Commun. 2020, 11, 2308.

[5] Suárez-Rodríguez, M.; Martín-García, B.; Skowroński, W.; Calavalle, F.; Tsirkin, S. S.; Souza, I.; De Juan, F.; Chuvilin, A.; Fert, A.; Gobbi, M.; Casanova, F.; Hueso, L. E. Odd Non-Linear Conductivity under Spatial Inversion in Chiral Tellurium. Phys Rev Lett 2024, 132, 046303.

[6] Fartab, D. S.; Guimarães, J.; Schmidt, M.; Zhang, H. Highly Tunable Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling and Crossover from Weak Localization to Weak Antilocalization in Ionic-Gated Tellurium. Phys. Rev. B 2023, 108, 115305.

[7] Reuven, B.; Movsesyan, A.; Santiago, E. Y.; Houben, L.; Wang, Z.; Govorov, A. O.; Markovich, G. Anisotropic Circular Dichroism in Aligned Chiral Tellurium Nanorods. Adv. Opt. Mater. 2023, 2203142.

[8] Ben-Moshe, A.; Da Silva, A.; Müller, A.; Abu-Odeh, A.; Harrison, P.; Waelder, J.; Niroui, F.; Ophus, C.; Minor, A. M.; Asta, M.; Theis, W.; Ercius, P.; Alivisatos, A. P. The Chain of Chirality Transfer in Tellurium Nanocrystals. Science 2021, 372, 729–733.

[9] Niu, C.; Huang, S.; Ghosh, N.; Tan, P.; Wang, M.; Wu, W.; Xu, X.; Ye, P. D. Tunable Circular Photogalvanic and Photovoltaic Effect in 2D Tellurium with Different Chirality. Nano Lett. 2023, 23, 3599–3606.

[10] Spirito, D.; Marras, S.; Martín-García, B. Lattice Dynamics in Chiral Tellurium by Linear and Circularly Polarized Raman Spectroscopy: Crystal Orientation and Handedness. J. Mater. Chem. C 2024, DOI: 10.1039.D3TC04333A.

Acknowledgements:

This work is supported under Project PID2021-128004NB-C21 funded by Spanish MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and under the María de Maeztu Units of Excellence Programme (Grant CEX2020-001038-M). Additionally, this work was carried out with support from the Basque Science Foundation for Science (IKERBASQUE) – HYMNOS project and the “Ramón y Cajal” Programme by the Spanish MCIN/AEI (grant no. RYC2021-034836-I).

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