Condensed Matter

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are promising channel materials for next-generation field-effect transistors (FETs) thanks to their unique mechanical properties and enhanced electrostatic control. However, the performance of these devices can be strongly limited by the scattering processes between carriers and phonons, usually occurring at high rates in 2D materials. Here, we use quantum transport simulations calibrated on first-principle computations to report on dissipative transport in antimonene and arsenene n -type FETs at the scaling limit. We show that the widely-used approximations of either ballistic transport or simple acoustic deformation potential scattering result in large overestimation of the ON current, due to neglecting the dominant intervalley and optical phonon scattering processes. We additionally investigate valley engineering strategy [Nano Lett. \textbf{19}, 3723 (2019)] to improve the device performance by removing the valley degeneracy and suppressing most of the intervalley scattering channels via an uniaxial strain along the zigzag direction. The method is applicable to other similar 2D semiconductors characterized by multivalley transport.

After the discovery of magnetism in monolayer CrI3, the magnetic properties of different 2D materials from the chromium-trihalide family are intuitively assumed to be similar, yielding magnetic anisotropy from the spin-orbit coupling on halide ligands. Here we reveal significant differences between the CrI3 and CrBr3 magnetic monolayers in their magnetic anisotropy, resulting Curie temperature, hysteresis in external magnetic field, and evolution of magnetism with strain, all predominantly attributed to distinctly different interplay of atomic contributions to spin-orbit coupling in two materials.

We propose a class of nodal line semimetals that host an eight-fold degenerate double Dirac nodal line (DDNL) with negligible spin-orbit coupling. We find only 5 of the 230 space groups host the DDNL. The DDNL can be considered as a combination of two Dirac nodal lines, and has a trivial Berry phase. This leads to two possible but completely different surface states, namely, a torus surface state covering the whole surface Brillouin zone and no surface state at all. Based on first-principles calculations, we predict that the hydrogen storage material LiBH is an ideal DDNL semimetal, where the line resides at Fermi level, is relatively flat in energy, and exhibits a large linear energy range. Interestingly, both the two novel surface states of DDNL can be realized in LiBH. Further, we predict that with a magnetic field parallel to DDNL, the Landau levels of DDNL are doubly degenerate due to Kramers-like degeneracy and have a doubly degenerate zero-mode.

The system of double quantum wells separated by barriers is suggested for switching and modulation of light. The system has potential for high operational speed and large modulation depth.

Designing molecular nanowires with high electrical conductance that facilitate efficient charge transport over long distances are highly desirable for future molecular-scale circuitry. However most of the molecular wires act as tunnel barriers and their electrical conductance is decaying exponentially with increasing the length. Just recently a few studies have shown increasing conductance with length. In this study, for the first time, we have identified new class of molecular wires that exhibit both increase and decrease of room temperature conductance with length (dual attenuation factor) depend on their connection points to electrodes. We show that this dual attenuation factor is an inherent property of these graphene-like nanowires and its demonstration depends on the constructive quantum interference pattern for different connectivities to electrode. This is significant because a given nanographene molecular wire can show both negative and positive attenuation factor. This enables a systematic design of connectivity dependent high/low-conductance molecular wires for future molecular-scale circuitry.

Cooper pair splitters are promising candidates for generating spin-entangled electrons. However, the splitting of Cooper pairs is a random and noisy process, which hinders further synchronized operations on the entangled electrons. To circumvent this problem, we here propose and analyze a dynamic Cooper pair splitter that produces a noiseless and regular flow of spin-entangled electrons. The Cooper pair splitter is based on a superconductor coupled to quantum dots, whose energy levels are tuned in and out of resonance to control the splitting process. We identify the optimal operating conditions for which exactly one Cooper pair is split per period of the external drive and the flow of entangled electrons becomes noiseless. To characterize the regularity of the Cooper pair splitter in the time domain, we analyze the g (2) -function of the output currents and the distribution of waiting times between split Cooper pairs. Our proposal is feasible using current technology, and it paves the way for dynamic quantum information processing with spin-entangled electrons.

Nonradiative processes limit optoelectronic functionality of nanocrystals and curb their device performance. Nevertheless, the dynamic structural origins of nonradiative relaxations in nanocrystals are not understood. Here, femtosecond electron diffraction measurements corroborated by atomistic simulations uncover transient lattice deformations accompanying radiationless electronic processes in semiconductor nanocrystals. Investigation of the excitation energy dependence shows that hot carriers created by a photon energy considerably larger than the bandgap induce structural distortions at nanocrystal surfaces on few picosecond timescales associated with the localization of trapped holes. On the other hand, carriers created by a photon energy close to the bandgap result in transient lattice heating that occurs on a much longer 200 ps timescale, governed by an Auger heating mechanism. Elucidation of the structural deformations associated with the surface trapping of hot holes provides atomic-scale insights into the mechanisms deteriorating optoelectronic performance and a pathway towards minimizing these losses in nanocrystal devices.

We perform a detailed analysis of electronic polarizability of graphene with different theoretical approaches. From Kubo's linear response formalism, we give a general expression of frequency and wave-vector dependent polarizability within the random phase approximation. Four theoretical approaches have been applied to the single-layer graphene and their differences are on the band-overlap of wavefunctions. By comparing with the \textit{ab initio} calculation, we discuss the validity of methods used in literature. Our results show that the tight-binding method is as good as the time-demanding \textit{ab initio} approach in calculating the polarizability of graphene. Moreover, due to the special Dirac-cone band structure of graphene, the Dirac model reproduces results of the tight-binding method for energy smaller than \SI{3}{\electronvolt}. For doped graphene, the intra-band transitions dominate at low energies and can be described by the Lindhard formula for two-dimensional electron gases. At zero temperature and long-wavelength limit, with the relaxation time approximation, all theoretical methods reduce to a long-wave analytical formula and the intra-band contributions agree to the Drude polarizability of graphene. Effects of electrical doping and temperature are also discussed. This work may provide a solid reference for researches and applications of the screening effect of graphene.

We investigate instabilities of the magnetic ground state in ferromagnetic metals that are induced by uniform electrical currents, and, in particular, go beyond previous analyses by including dipolar interactions. These instabilities arise from spin-transfer torques that lead to Doppler shifted spin waves. For sufficiently large electrical currents, spin-wave excitations have negative energy with respect to the uniform magnetic ground state, while remaining dynamically stable due to dissipative spin-transfer torques. Hence, the uniform magnetic ground state is energetically unstable, but is not able to dynamically reach the new ground state. We estimate this to happen for current densities j??1?�D/ D c ) 10 13 A/ m 2 in typical thin film experiments, with D the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction constant, and D c the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction that is required for spontaneous formation of spirals or skyrmions. These current densities can be made arbitrarily small for ultrathin film thicknesses at the order of nanometers, due to surface- and interlayer effects. From an analogue gravity perspective, the stable negative energy states are an essential ingredient to implement event horizons for magnons -- the quanta of spin waves -- giving rise to e.g. Hawking radiation and can be used to significantly amplify spin waves in a so-called black-hole laser.

For the pristine phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) with edge states, there exist two categories of edge bands near the Fermi energy (EF), i.e., the shuttle-shaped twofold-degenerate and the near-flat simple degenerate edge bands. However, the usual experimental measurement may not distinguish the difference between the two categories of edge bands. Here we study the varying rule for the edge bands of PNRs under an external electrostatic field. By using the KWANT code based on the tight-binding approach, we find that the twofold-degenerate edge bands can be divided into two separated shuttles until the degeneracy is completely removed and a gap near EFis opened under a sufficiently strong in-plane electric field. Importantly, each shuttle from the ribbon upper or lower edge outmost atoms is identified according to the local density of states. However, under a small off-plane field the shuttle-shaped bands are easily induced into two near-flat bands contributed from the edge atoms of the top and bottom sublayers, respectively. The evidence provides the edge and sublayer degrees of freedom (DOF) for the PNRs with shuttle-shaped edge bands, of which is obviously different from another category PNRs intrinsically with near-flat edge bands. This is because that the former category of ribbons solely have four zigzag-like atomic configurations at the edges in each unit cell, which also results in that the property is robust against the point defect in the ribbon center area. As an application, furthermore, based on this issue we propose a homogenous junction of a shuttle-edge-band PNR attached by two electric gates. Interestingly, the transport property of the junction with field manipulation well reflects the characteristics of the two DOFs. These findings may provide a further understanding on PNRs and initiate new developments in PNR-based electronics.