Charge transfers resulting from weak bondings between two-dimensional materials and the supporting substrates are often tacitly associated with their work function differences. In this context, two-dimensional materials could be normally doped at relatively low levels. Here, we demonstrate how even weak hybridization with substrates can lead to an apparent heavy doping, using the example of monolayer 1H-TaS₂ grown on Au(111). Ab-initio calculations show that sizable changes in Fermi areas can arise, while the transferred charge between substrate and two-dimensional material is much smaller than the variation of Fermi areas suggests. This mechanism, which we refer to as pseudodoping, is associated with non-linear energy-dependent shifts of electronic spectra, which our scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments reveal for clean and defective TaS₂ monolayer on Au(111). The influence of pseudodoping on the formation of many-body states in two-dimensional metallic materials is analyzed, shedding light on utilizing pseudodoping to control electronic phase diagrams.

We report the existence of the quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) in monolayers of transition-metal carbides MC (M = Zr, Hf). Under ambient conditions, the ZrC monolayer exhibits QSHE with an energy gap of 54 meV, in which topological helical edge states exist. Enhanced d _xy − d _xy interaction induces band inversion, resulting in nontrivial topological features. By applying in-plane strain, the HfC monolayer can be tuned from a trivial insulator to a quantum spin Hall insulator with an energy gap of 170 meV, three times that of the ZrC monolayer. The strong stability of MC monolayers provides a new platform for QSHE and spintronic applications.