New ferroelectric materials with satisfactory performance at the nanoscale are critical for the ever-developing microelectronics industry. Here, we report two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectricity in elemental tellurium multilayers, which exhibit spontaneous in-plane polarization due to the interlayer interaction between lone pairs. The magnitude of the polarization reaches about 1.02 × 10⁻¹⁰ C m⁻¹ per layer, which can be detected by current experimental technology as recently done for the 2D FE compound SnTe. The spontaneous ferroelectric polarization can be preserved for the bilayer Te film even above room temperature. Also, we show that due to the strong spin–orbit coupling of Te, there appear nontrivial valley-dependent spin-textures for the hole carriers, and the textures are coupled with the direction of FE polarization, which is tunable by an external electric field. Our findings not only introduce the concept of ferroelectricity in elemental systems, but also broaden the family of the 2D ferroelectric materials and offer a promising platform for novel electronic and spintronic applications.

中文翻译：

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超薄元素Te多层中的二维铁电和可切换自旋纹理†

在纳米级具有令人满意性能的新型铁电材料对于不断发展的微电子工业至关重要。在这里，我们报告元素碲多层中的二维（2D）铁电，由于孤对之间的层间相互作用，其表现出自发的面内极化。极化强度达到约1.02×10 ^-10 C m ^-1每层，可以通过当前的实验技术来检测，就像最近对2D FE化合物SnTe所做的那样。即使在室温以上，双层Te膜也可以保持自发的铁电极化。同样，我们表明，由于Te的强自旋轨道耦合，出现了空穴载流子的非平凡的谷相关自旋纹理，并且纹理与FE极化方向耦合，这可以通过外部电场来调节。我们的发现不仅在元素系统中引入了铁电的概念，而且拓宽了2D铁电材料的范围，并为新型电子和自旋电子学应用提供了有希望的平台。