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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Anomalous impurity-induced charge modulations in black phosphorus

Byeongin Lee1,*, Junho Bang1,*, Sayan Banerjee3, João Augusto Sobral3, Young Woo Choi4, Claudia Felser2, Mathias S. Scheurer3, Jian-Feng Ge2,†, and Doohee Cho1,‡

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: Jianfeng.Ge@cpfs.mpg.de
  • ‡Contact author: dooheecho@yonsei.ac.kr
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Phys. Rev. B 113, L041105 – Published 5 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/39jp-9dkp

Abstract

We observe anomalous charge modulations induced by ionized indium impurities on the surface of the semiconductor black phosphorus by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). When the impurities are switched into a negatively charged state by the STM tip, periodic charge modulations emerge around the impurity center, but strictly confined by the nanoscale impurity potential. These modulations form a distorted triangular pattern, whose periodicity remains unchanged in a wide range of positive bias. Furthermore, these local charge orders exhibit an anisotropy opposite to that expected based on the anisotropy of the Fermi surface, challenging a simple band-structure interpretation. Our experiment demonstrates the possibility of creating and manipulating macroscopic charge orders through impurity engineering.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. B 113, L041105– Published 5 January, 2026
  • Received 19 February 2025
  • Revised 4 December 2025
  • Accepted 8 December 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

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