We investigate mechanically exfoliated thin 1T-TaS2 with scanning tunneling microscopy at room temperature. Sample preparation without air exposure enables access to intrinsic charge-density-wave (CDW) phases of thin 1T-TaS2. At room temperature, we can observe the expected nearly commensurate CDW (NCCDW) phase on thin flakes similar to bulk 1T-TaS2. Further analysis reveals that the CDW domains in the NCCDW phase become smaller and have more anisotropic shape with decreasing thickness in the range of 8-28 layers. Our findings demonstrate that the anisotropic CDW nature of thin 1T-TaS2 would be crucial to understand its exotic CDW-related phenomena and demand a systematic study on its correlation between the thickness-driven CDW domain anisotropy and the intermediate CDW states in thin 1T-TaS2.
@article{arxiv.2212.12128,
title = {Thickness dependent charge density wave networks on thin 1T-TaS$_2$},
author = {Wooin Yang and Dowook Kim and Hyoung Kug Kim and Tae-Hwan Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.12128},
year = {2023}
}