- Accepted Paper
Electronic band structure reconstruction in Ni intercalated ZrTe
Phys. Rev. Materials - Accepted 6 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lc3q-fy94
Phys. Rev. Materials - Accepted 6 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lc3q-fy94
The filling of the large van der Waals gap in Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs) often leads to lattice and electronic instabilities, which prelude the onset of a rich phenomenology. Motivated by previous results from macroscopic measurements, we investigate the electronic structure of the TMDs ZrTe and Ni-intercalated ZrTe (NiZrTe, ) employing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). We readily identify in NiZrTe two flat bands, most likely associated with localized Ni-derived 3-states, at about eV and eV in binding energy. More significantly, at low , we identify an electronic structure reconstruction in NiZrTe, which halves the electronic periodicity along the direction. This is reminiscent of a commensurate band folding with wave-vector . A mean-field model for a charge density wave (CDW) transition driven by interband hole-hole interactions is solved with inputs from the experimentally determined electronic band structure. Comparison between theory and experiments unveils a CDW transition in NiZrTe, for which the gap opens above the Fermi level. Our findings invite further investigation into the structural properties of intercalated ZrTe.
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