Experimental Observations Indicating the Topological Nature of the Edge States on HfTe_5

The topological edge states of two-dimensional topological insulators with large energy gaps furnish ideal conduction channels for dissipationless current transport. Transition metal tellurides XTe_5 (X=Zr, Hf) are theoretically predicted to be large-gap two-dimensional topological insulators, and the experimental observations of their bulk insulating gap and in-gap edge states have been reported, but the topological nature of these edge states still remains to be further elucidated. Here, we report our low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy study on single crystals of HfTe_5. We demonstrate a full energy gap of \sim80 meV near the Fermi level on the surface monolayer of HfTe_5 and that such an insulating energy gap gets filled with finite energy states when measured at the monolayer step edges. Remarkably, such states are absent at the edges of a narrow monolayer strip of one-unit-cell in width but persist at both step edges of a unit-cell wide monolayer groove. These experimental observations strongly indicate that the edge states of HfTe_5 monolayers are not trivially caused by translational symmetry breaking, instead they are topological in nature protected by the 2D nontrivial bulk properties.