Liganded Xene as a Prototype of Two-Dimensional Stiefel-Whitney Insulators

TL;DR

This paper predicts that liganded Xenes, a class of hydrogenated and halogenated 2D materials, are realizations of 2D Stiefel-Whitney insulators with large, tunable band gaps, expanding the experimental and theoretical landscape of topological phases.

Contribution

It identifies liganded Xenes as practical 2D Stiefel-Whitney insulators, providing a new material platform for exploring topological physics without Berry curvature.

Findings

Liganded Xenes are 2D SWIs with protected corner states.

They exhibit large, tunable band gaps up to 3.5 eV.

The study offers feasible material candidates for experimental realization.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) Stiefel-Whitney insulator (SWI), which is characterized by the second Stiefel-Whitney class, is a new class of topological phases with zero Berry curvature. As a novel topological state, it has been well studied in theory but seldom realized in realistic materials. Here we propose that a large class of liganded Xenes, i.e., hydrogenated and halogenated 2D group-IV honeycomb lattices, are 2D SWIs. The nontrivial topology of liganded Xenes is identified by the bulk topological invariant and the existence of protected corner states. Moreover, the large and tunable band gap (up to 3.5 eV) of liganded Xenes will facilitate the experimental characterization of the 2D SWI phase. Our findings not only provide abundant realistic material candidates that are experimentally feasible, but also draw more fundamental research interest towards the topological physics associated with Stiefel-Whitney class in the absence of Berry curvature.