Tungsten ditelluride

WTe₂

Also called Td-WTe₂, 1T′-WTe₂

van der Waals crystal depends on form

Bulk WTe₂ shows a magnetoresistance that keeps growing without saturating in enormous magnetic fields; a single layer conducts only along its edges up to about 100 kelvin – a record temperature for this effect when it was reported – and turns superconducting with a gate voltage.

Cell: Rectangular, a = 6.28 Å, b = 3.50 Å
Atoms per cell: 6
W–Te bonds: 2.71–2.82 Å
W–W bond: 2.86 Å
Height: 4.15 Å between the outer atom centres

Octahedral like the 1T form, but distorted: the tungsten atoms shift toward each other in pairs and form zigzag chains along one in-plane direction, drawn here as W–W bonds. The distortion turns the hexagonal cell into a rectangle and splits the tellurium on each side into two heights. This structure is why a WTe₂ monolayer is a quantum spin Hall insulator and the bulk crystal a Weyl semimetal with enormous magnetoresistance. One layer of bulk Td-WTe₂ (Brown, Acta Crystallographica 20, 268, 1966; COD 2310355): a = 6.28 Å across the chains, b = 3.50 Å along them, W–W 2.86 Å.

Data sheet

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Kind of sheet: van der Waals crystal
Peels off a layered crystal, one sheet at a time
Behaves as: depends on form
Band gap: Bulk: compensated semimetal with nearly equal electron and hole densities. Monolayer 1T′: quantum spin Hall insulator with a small bulk gap of ~50 meV
Thickness: ~0.7 nm per layer
Structure: Distorted octahedral Td phase (orthorhombic, Pmn2₁) with zigzag tungsten chains; the monolayer is 1T′
Space group: WTe₂ (Td): bulk Pmn2₁, monolayer P2₁/m
Bulk: the Materials Project crystal linked below. Monolayer: the 2DMatPedia layer, as a periodic slab
Stability: Monolayers degrade within minutes in air; monolayer device work relies on glovebox fabrication and full hBN encapsulation.
First made: Non-saturating magnetoresistance in 2014 (Ali and colleagues); quantum spin Hall effect in monolayers predicted in 2014 (Qian and colleagues) and observed up to 100 K in 2018 (Wu and colleagues)
Materials Project: WTe₂ (Td)
Computed crystal structure and properties
2DMatPedia: WTe₂
Computed monolayer, exfoliated from a bulk crystal of the same compound

Compare with other materials

Key properties

Non-saturating magnetoresistance in bulk – about 13 million percent at 60 T and 0.53 K
Monolayer quantum spin Hall edge conduction up to ~100 K
Gate-induced superconductivity in the monolayer below ~1 K
Bulk Td phase is a candidate type-II Weyl semimetal; few-layer flakes show switchable polarisation despite being metallic
Nonlinear Hall effect from Berry-curvature dipoles in bilayers

How it is made

Vapour-transport or flux growth of bulk crystals
Mechanical exfoliation and hBN encapsulation entirely inside a glovebox
MBE of monolayers on bilayer graphene/SiC for spectroscopy
CVD tellurisation of tungsten precursors

Uses, and how close they are

Topological edge-state and superconducting research deviceslab
Magnetic-field sensing via bulk magnetoresistancelab

Readiness runs lab → prototype → pilot → deployed.

Open problems

Is the monolayer bulk gap a single-particle topological gap, or an excitonic-insulator gap stabilised by interactions?
How do the quantum spin Hall edges couple to gate-induced superconductivity – and can they host Majorana modes?
What is the mechanism of switchable polarisation in few-layer WTe₂, given that it conducts?

Going deeper

Short notes for specialists. Choose a lens in the header and yours comes first.

For theoreticians · your lens

Band inversion, spin–orbit coupling and correlations all matter. PBE often predicts a semimetal for the monolayer while hybrid functionals or GW open the observed gap, and recent work argues for an excitonic insulator. Bulk transport needs compensated two-band models with anisotropic mobilities; Berry-curvature dipoles explain the nonlinear Hall response in bilayers.

For experimentalists · your lens

Everything must happen in an inert atmosphere. Find crystal orientation with polarised Raman (strongly anisotropic A₁ modes near 164 and 212 cm⁻¹). For edge transport, separate edge from bulk conduction using multi-terminal geometries and temperature dependence.

For engineers · your lens

A physics platform rather than an engineering material: air instability and low operating temperatures rule out applications for now.

In the research tracks

Theory frontiers

Growth methods

Recent news

The newest items tagged WTe₂, from the news feed updated 5 Oct 2026.

Journal 3 Oct 2026 Nano Letters

Scalable, Simple, and Versatile Encapsulation of 2D Materials and Devices

Air-sensitive 2D materials present fundamental challenges for device integration. Encapsulation is required to preserve intrinsic properties, yet conventional strategies require complicated fabrication workflows and fail with thicker flakes. We demonstrate that electron-beam (e-beam) evaporated aluminum oxide (AlOx)…

ExperimentWTe₂ LaTe₃, GdTe₃, ErTe₃

Journal 28 Sep 2026 Nano Letters

Sliding Disassembly of van der Waals Heterostructures

Many recent advances in our understanding of two-dimensional electron systems stem from van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. The assembly process relies on the weak bonding across interfaces between layered vdW compounds, making it possible to construct exceptionally clean heterostructures from chemically and…

ExperimentGraphene WSe₂ WTe₂

Preprintnot yet peer reviewed 21 Sep 2026 arXiv

Carrier-mediated spin helices in low-dimensional systems: Josephson-interference features and correlation renormalization

Carrier-induced helical magnetism can arise in interacting one-dimensional systems coupled to localized moments. Here, we investigate the coupled-wire sliding-Luttinger-liquid counterparts with and without valley degrees of freedom, using isolated Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids as reference limits. The carrier spin…

TheoryWTe₂

Preprintnot yet peer reviewed 25 Aug 2026 arXiv

Intercalation of Alkali Metal into WTe2, the Crystal Structure of A0.5WTe2 and Observation of a Metal-to-Semiconductor Transition

We explore the cationic intercalation of tungsten ditelluride (WTe2) with potassium (K), rubidium (Rb), and cesium (Cs), yielding intercalation compounds of the form A0.5WTe2 (A = K, Rb, Cs). Structural characterization was performed using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), while diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier…

TheoryWTe₂

Preprintnot yet peer reviewed 23 Jun 2026 arXiv

Proximity-Induced Spin Reorientation in Monolayer CrI₃ on Hexagonal WTe₂

Magnetic anisotropy controls the orientation and thermal stability of two-dimensional magnetic order. Predicting proximity-induced changes in anisotropy requires linking the electronic structure to microscopic magnetic interactions and finite-temperature behavior. Here we study monolayer CrI₃ on hexagonal WTe₂ using a…

ExperimentTheoryWTe₂ CrI₃, VI₃, TiCl₃

All 12 items tagged WTe₂ in the news feed · RSS feed for WTe₂

Key references

Large, non-saturating magnetoresistance in WTe₂Ali et al. · Nature 514, 205 (2014)cited by 1,675doi:10.1038/nature13763
Quantum spin Hall effect in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenidesQian et al. · Science 346, 1344 (2014)cited by 2,062doi:10.1126/science.1256815
Observation of the quantum spin Hall effect up to 100 kelvin in a monolayer crystalWu et al. · Science 359, 76 (2018)cited by 823doi:10.1126/science.aan6003