Spin splitting with persistent spin textures induced by the line defect in the 1T phase of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

Abstract

The spin splitting driven by spin-orbit coupling in monolayer (ML) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) family has been widely studied only for the 1H-phase structure, while it is not profound for the 1T-phase structure due to the centrosymmetric of the crystal. Based on first-principles calculations, we show that significant spin splitting can be induced in the ML 1T-TMDCs by introducing the line defect. Taking the ML PtSe2 as a representative example, we considered the most stable form of the line defects, namely Se-vacancy line defect (Se-VLD). We find that large spin splitting is observed in the defect states of the Se-VLD, exhibiting a highly unidirectional spin configuration in the momentum space. This peculiar spin configuration may yield the so-called persistent spin textures (PST), a specific spin structure resulting in protection against spin-decoherence and supporting an extraordinarily long spin lifetime. Moreover, by using k.p perturbation theory supplemented with symmetry analysis, we clarified that the emerging of the spin splitting maintaining the PST in the defect states is originated from the inversion symmetry breaking together with one-dimensional nature of the Se-VLD engineered ML PtSe2. Our findings pave a possible way to induce the significant spin splitting in the ML 1T-TMDCs, which could be highly important for designing spintronic devices.