Lanthanum Tritelluride (LaTe₃)

LaTe₃ is a representative member of the rare-earth tritelluride family, adopting a layered van der Waals structure built from alternately stacked bilayer Te square-net planes and insulating LaTe slabs, with an orthorhombic structure and space group Cmcm (often approximated as tetragonal). Its core property is a quasi-two-dimensional charge density wave (CDW) within the conducting Te planes: because the Te square net exhibits nearly perfect Fermi surface nesting, the system forms an incommensurate CDW at very high temperatures (typically above room temperature), with a modulation wavevector along a specific in-plane direction, producing pronounced in-plane anisotropy. Since La³⁺ is a nonmagnetic ion (f⁰ configuration), LaTe₃ is frequently used as a "magnetism-free reference system" for studying pure CDW physics.