No Arabic abstract
Metallic transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have exhibited various exotic physical properties and hold the promise of novel optoelectronic and topological devices applications. However, the synthesis of metallic TMDs is based on gas-phase methods and requires high temperature condition. As an alternative to the gas-phase synthetic approach, lower temperature eutectic liquid-phase synthesis presents a very promising approach with the potential for larger-scale and controllable growth of high-quality thin metallic TMDs single crystals. Herein, we report the first realization of low-temperature eutectic liquid-phase synthesis of type-II Dirac semimetal PtTe2 single crystals with thickness ranging from 2 to 200 nm. The electrical measurement of synthesized PtTe2 reveals a record-high conductivity of as high as 3.3*106 S/m at room temperature. Besides, we experimentally identify the weak antilocalization behavior in the type-II Dirac semimetal PtTe2 for the first time. Furthermore, we develop a simple and general strategy to obtain atomically-thin PtTe2 crystal by thinning as-synthesized bulk samples, which can still retain highly crystalline and exhibits excellent electric conductivity. Our results of controllable and scalable low-temperature eutectic liquid-phase synthesis and layer-by-layer thinning of high-quality thin PtTe2 single crystals offer a simple and general approach for obtaining different thickness metallic TMDs with high-melting point transition metal.
The synthesis of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has been a primary focus for 2D nanomaterial research over the last 10 years, however, only a small fraction of this research has been concentrated on transition metal ditellurides. In particular, nanoscale platinum ditelluride (PtTe2) has rarely been investigated, despite its potential applications in catalysis, photonics and spintronics. Of the reports published, the majority examine mechanically-exfoliated flakes from chemical vapor transport (CVT) grown crystals. While this production method is ideal for fundamental studies, it is very resource intensive therefore rendering this process unsuitable for large scale applications. In this report, the synthesis of thin films of PtTe2 through the reaction of solid-phase precursor films is described. This offers a production method for large-area, thickness-controlled PtTe2, suitable for a range of applications. These polycrystalline PtTe2 films were grown at temperatures as low as 450 degC, significantly below the typical temperatures used in the CVT synthesis methods. To investigate their potential applicability, these films were examined as electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The films showed promising catalytic behavior, however, the PtTe2 was found to undergo chemical transformation to a substoichiometric chalcogenide compound under ORR conditions. This study shows while PtTe2 is stable and highly useful for HER, this property does not apply to ORR, which undergoes a fundamentally different mechanism. This study broadens our knowledge of the electrocatalysis of TMDs.
We report electron transport studies in an encapsulated few-layer WTe$_2$ at low temperatures and high magnetic fields. The magnetoconductance reveals a temperature-induced crossover between weak antilocalization (WAL) and weak localization (WL) in quantum diffusive regime. We show that the crossover clearly manifests coexistence and competition among several characteristic lengths, including the dephasing length, the spin-flip length, and the mean free path. In addition, low temperature conductance increases logarithmically with the increase of temperature indicating an interplay of electron-electron interaction (EEI) and spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We demonstrate the existences and quantify the strengths of EEI and SOC which are considered to be responsible for gap opening in the quantum spin hall state in WTe2 at the monolayer limit.
We discover weak antilocalization effect of two-dimensional electron gas with one electric subband occupied in the inversion layer on p-type HgCdTe crystal. By fitting the model of Iordanskii, Lyanda-Geller and Pikus to data at varies temperatures and gate voltages, we extract phase coherence and spin-orbit scattering times as functions of temperature and carrier density. We find that Elliot-Yafet mechanism and Nyquist mechanism are the dominating spin decoherence and dephasing mechanisms, respectively. We also find that the Rashba parameter is relatively large and the dependence of Rashba parameter upon carrier density is not monotonic and an optimal carrier density exists for the maximization of spin-orbit coupling.
A clear gate voltage tunable weak antilocalization and a giant magnetoresistance of 400 percent are observed at 1.9 K in single layer graphene with an out-of-plane field. A large magnetoresistance value of 275 percent is obtained even at room temperature implying potential applications of graphene in magnetic sensors. Both the weak antilocalization and giant magnetoresistance persists far away from the charge neutrality point in contrast to previous reports, and both effects are originated from charged impurities. Interestingly, the signatures of Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations and the quantum Hall effect are also observed for the same sample.
Topological insulators (TI) are a new class of quantum materials with insulating bulk enclosed by topologically protected metallic boundaries. The surface states of three-dimensional TIs have spin helical Dirac structure, and are robust against time reversal invariant perturbations. This extraordinary property is notably exemplified by the absence of backscattering by nonmagnetic impurities and the weak antilocalization (WAL) of Dirac fermions. Breaking the time reversal symmetry (TRS) by magnetic element doping is predicted to create a variety of exotic topological magnetoelectric effects. Here we report transport studies on magnetically doped TI Cr-Bi2Se3. With increasing Cr concentration, the low temperature electrical conduction exhibits a characteristic crossover from WAL to weak localization (WL). In the heavily doped regime where WL dominates at the ground state, WAL reenters as temperature rises, but can be driven back to WL by strong magnetic field. These complex phenomena can be explained by a unified picture involving the evolution of Berry phase with the energy gap opened by magnetic impurities. This work demonstrates an effective way to manipulate the topological transport properties of the TI surface states by TRS-breaking perturbations.