  Topological defects in ultrathin layers are often formed during synthesis and
processing, thereby, strongly influencing their electronic properties . In this
paper, we investigate the role of Stone-Wales (SW) defects in modifying the
electronic properties of the monolayers of Sn and group-V elements. The
calculated results find the electronic properties of stanene (monolayer of Sn
atoms) to be strongly dependent on the concentration of SW-defects e.g.,
defective stanene has nearly zero band gap (~ 0.03 eV) for the defect
concentration of 2.2 x 10^13 cm^-2 which opens up to 0.2 eV for the defect
concentration of 3.7 x 10^13 cm^-2. In contrast, SW-defects appear to induce
conduction states in the semiconducting monolayers of group-V elements. These
conduction states act as channels for electron tunnelling, and the calculated
tunnelling characteristics show the highest differential conductance for the
negative bias with the asymmetric current-voltage characteristics. On the other
hand, the highest differential conductance was found for the positive bias in
stanene. Simulated STM topographical images of stanene and group-V monolayers
show distinctly different features in terms of their cross-sectional views and
distance-height profiles which can serve as fingerprints to identify the
topological defects in the monolayers of group-IV and group-V elements in
experiments.
