Flat Band Generation Through Interlayer Geometric Frustration in Intercalated Transition Metal Dichalcogenides.

Electronic flat bands can lead to rich many-body quantum phases by quenching the electron's kinetic energy and enhancing many-body correlation. The reduced bandwidth can be realized by either destructive quantum interference in frustrated lattices, or by generating heavy band folding with avoided band crossing in Moiré superlattices. Here a general approach is proposed to introduce flat bands into widely studied transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials by dilute intercalation. A flat band with vanishing dispersion is observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) over the entire momentum space in intercalated MnTaS. Polarization-dependent ARPES measurements combined with symmetry analysis reveal the orbital characters of the flat band. Supercell tight-binding simulations suggest that such flat bands arising from destructive interference between Mn and Ta on S through hopping pathways, are ubiquitous in a range of TMD families as well as for different intercalation configurations. The findings establish a new material platform to manipulate flat band structures and explore their corresponding emergent correlated properties.