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Researchers experimentally realized a pristine, two-dimensional two-orbital kagome lattice in monolayer antimony on SiC(0001) via substrate-induced orbital filtering of in-plane $p_x/p_y$ orbitals into an isolated six-band manifold. At chemically enforced half filling, the Fermi level pins to a closed nodal line, driving a unit-cell-conserving breathing instability that opens a giant insulating gap while exhibiting orbital-resolved obstructed atomic limits. This clean elemental realization resolves longstanding ambiguities in correlated materials by cleanly decoupling orbital degrees of freedom and frustrated lattice geometry from three-dimensional structural complexities.
Monolayer antimonene eliminates three-dimensional lattice clutter to isolate a minimal multi-orbital kagome system, revealing a giant gap-opening breathing instability and hidden orbital-resolved topological obstruction.
Kagome materials have emerged as a major platform for correlated and topological quantum matter, hosting flat bands, Dirac dispersions and van Hove singularities rooted in frustrated lattice geometry. While their essential physics is epitomized by the canonical single-orbital kagome model, real kagome materials are intrinsically multi-orbital and typically chemically and structurally complex, with additional three-dimensional coupling making kagome geometry and orbital degrees of freedom difficult to disentangle. Here we realize a truly two-dimensional, elemental two-orbital kagome system in monolayer Sb on SiC(0001). Substrate-induced orbital filtering isolates the in-plane Sb p_x/p_y orbitals into a six-band kagome manifold, establishing a chemically simple, minimal platform for multi-orbital kagome physics. We demonstrate two consequences that distinguish this system from the canonical single-orbital model. First, chemically enforced half filling pins the Fermi level to a closed nodal line, whose finite density of states drives a unit-cell-conserving breathing instability and opens a giant insulating gap. Second, we uncover orbital-resolved atomic obstruction: individual orbital-derived manifolds realize obstructed atomic limits, whereas their combined half-filled valence manifold is non-obstructed. Our results establish kagome antimonene as a benchmark system for exploring orbital-driven electronic, structural and topological kagome physics in the genuine two-dimensional limit.