Search results for "Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics"
showing 10 items of 716 documents
Topological electronic structure and Weyl points in nonsymmorphic hexagonal materials
2020
Using topological band theory analysis we show that the nonsymmorphic symmetry operations in hexagonal lattices enforce Weyl points at the screw-invariant high-symmetry lines of the band structure. The corepresentation theory and connectivity group theory show that Weyl points are generated by band crossings in accordion-like and hourglass-like dispersion relations. These Weyl points are stable against weak perturbations and are protected by the screw rotation symmetry. Based on first-principles calculations we found a complete agreement between the topological predicted energy dispersion relations and real hexagonal materials. Topological charge (chirality) and Berry curvature calculations…
Raman signal reveals the rhombohedral crystallographic structure in ultra-thin layers of bismuth thermally evaporated on amorphous substrate
2021
Under the challenge of growing a single bilayer of Bi oriented in the (111) crystallographic direction over amorphous substrates, we have studied different thicknesses of Bi thermally evaporated onto silicon oxide in order to shed light on the dominant atomic structures and their oxidation. We have employed atomic force microscope, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscope approaches to demonstrate that Bi is crystalline and oriented in the (111) direction for thicknesses over 20 nm. Surprisingly, Raman spectroscopy indicates that the rhombohedral structure is preserved even for ultra-thin layers of Bi, down to $\sim 5$ nm. Moreover, the signals also reveal that bismuth films expo…
Design and operation of CMOS-compatible electron pumps fabricated with optical lithography
2017
We report CMOS-compatible quantized current sources (electron pumps) fabricated with nanowires (NWs) on 300mm SOI wafers. Unlike other Al, GaAs or Si based metallic or semiconductor pumps, the fabrication does not rely on electron-beam lithography. The structure consists of two gates in series on the nanowire and the only difference with the SOI nanowire process lies in long (40nm) nitride spacers. As a result a single, silicide island gets isolated between the gates and transport is dominated by Coulomb blockade at cryogenic temperatures thanks to the small size and therefore capacitance of this island. Operation and performances comparable to devices fabricated using e-beam lithography is…
Low-Power consumption Franz-Keldysh effect plasmonic modulator
2014
In this paper we report on a low energy consumption CMOS-compatible plasmonic modulator based on Franz-Keldysh effect in germanium on silicon. We performed integrated electro-optical simulations in order to optimize the main characteristics of the modulator. A 3.3 $dB$ extinction ratio for a 30 ${\mu}m$ long modulator is demonstrated under 3 $V$ bias voltage at an operation wavelength of 1647 $nm$. The estimated energy consumption is as low as 20 $fJ/bit$.
Electron refrigeration in hybrid structures with spin-split superconductors
2017
Electron tunneling between superconductors and normal metals has been used for an efficient refrigeration of electrons in the latter. Such cooling is a nonlinear effect and usually requires a large voltage. Here we study the electron cooling in heterostructures based on superconductors with a spin-splitting field coupled to normal metals via spin-filtering barriers. The cooling power shows a linear term in the applied voltage. This improves the coefficient of performance of electron refrigeration in the normal metal by shifting its optimum cooling to lower voltage, and also allows for cooling the spin-split superconductor by reverting the sign of the voltage. We also show how tunnel couplin…
Rippling of two-dimensional materials by line defects
2020
Two-dimensional materials and their mechanical properties are known to be profoundly affected by rippling deformations. However, although ripples are fairly well understood, less is known about their origin and controlled modification. Here, motivated by recent reports of laser-controlled creation of line defects in graphene, we investigate how line defects could be used to control rippling in graphene and other two-dimensional materials. By sequential multi-scale coupling of density-functional tight-binding and continuum elasticity simulations, we quantify the amount of rippling when the number and the cumulative length of the line defects increase. Simulations show that elastic sheets wit…
Limits of stability in supported graphene nanoribbons subject to bending
2016
Graphene nanoribbons are prone to in-plane bending even when supported on flat substrates. However, the amount of bending that ribbons can stably withstand remains poorly known. Here, by using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the stability limits of 0.5-1.9 nm wide armchair and zigzag graphene nanoribbons subject to bending. We observe that the limits for maximum stable curvatures are below ~10 deg/nm, in case the bending is externally forced and the limit is caused by buckling instability. Furthermore, it turns out that the limits for maximum stable curvatures are also below ~10 deg/nm, in case the bending is not forced and the limit arises only from the corrugated potential energy…
Minimizing coherent thermal conductance by controlling the periodicity of two-dimensional phononic crystals
2019
Periodic hole array phononic crystals (PnC) can strongly modify the phonon dispersion relations, and have been shown to influence thermal conductance coherently, especially at low temperatures where scattering is suppressed. One very important parameter influencing this effect is the period of the structure. Here, we measured the sub-Kelvin thermal conductance of nanofabricated PnCs with identical hole filling factors, but three different periodicities, 4, 8, and 16 $\mu$m, using superconducting tunnel junction thermometry. We found that all the measured samples can suppress thermal conductance by an order of magnitude, and have a lower thermal conductance than the previously measured small…
Finite-temperature geometric properties of the Kitaev honeycomb model
2018
We study finite temperature topological phase transitions of the Kitaev's spin honeycomb model in the vortex-free sector with the use of the recently introduced mean Uhlmann curvature. We employ an appropriate Fermionisation procedure to study the system as a two-band p-wave superconductor described by a BdG Hamiltonian. This allows to study relevant quantities such as Berry and mean Uhlmann curvatures in a simple setting. More specifically, we consider the spin honeycomb in the presence of an external magnetic field breaking time reversal symmetry. The introduction of such an external perturbation opens a gap in the phase of the system characterised by non-Abelian statistics, and makes the…
Semiempirical pseudopotential approach for nitride-based nanostructures and {\it ab initio} based passivation of free surfaces
2013
We present a semiempirical pseudopotential method based on screened atomic pseudopotentials and derived from \textit{ab initio} calculations. This approach is motivated by the demand for pseudopotentials able to address nanostructures, where \textit{ab initio} methods are both too costly and insufficiently accurate at the level of the local-density approximation, while mesoscopic effective-mass approaches are inapplicable due to the small size of the structures along, at least, one dimension. In this work we improve the traditional pseudopotential method by a two-step process: First, we invert a set of self-consistently determined screened {\it ab initio} potentials in wurtzite GaN for a ra…