Observation of Gapped Topological Surface States and Isolated Surface Resonances in PdTe2 Ultrathin Films

The superconductor PdTe2 is known to host bulk Dirac bands and topological surface states. The coexistence of superconductivity and topological surface states makes PdTe2 a promising platform for exploring topological superconductivity and Majorana bound states. In this work, we report the spectroscopic characterization of ultrathin PdTe2 films with thickness down to three monolayers (ML). In the 3 ML PdTe2 film, we observed spin-polarized surface resonance states, which are isolated from the bulk bands due to the quantum size effects. In addition, the hybridization of surface states on opposite faces leads to a thickness-dependent gap in the topological surface Dirac bands. Our photoemission results show clearly that the size of the hybridization gap increases as the film thickness is reduced. The observation of isolated surface resonances and gapped topological surface states sheds light on the applications of PdTe2 quantum films in spintronics and topological quantum computation.