We show that H-phase transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) monolayers such as MoS2 and WSe2, are orbital Hall insulators. They present very large orbital Hall conductivity plateaus in their semiconducting gap, where the spin Hall conductivity vanishes. Our results open the possibility of using TMDs for orbital current injection and orbital torque transfers that surpass their spin-counterparts in spin-orbitronics devices. The orbital Hall effect (OHE) in TMD monolayers occurs even in the absence of spin-orbit coupling. It can be linked to exotic momentum-space Dresselhaus-like orbital textures, analogous to the spin-momentum locking in 2D Dirac fermions that arise from a combination of orbital attributes and lattice symmetry.
@article{arxiv.2001.03592,
title = {Orbital Hall Insulating Phase in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers},
author = {Luis M. Canonico and Tarik P. Cysne and Alejandro Molina-Sanchez and R. B. Muniz and Tatiana G. Rappoport},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.03592},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
main text with 6 pages and 3 figures, and a Supplementary material