No Arabic abstract
Dirac and Weyl nodal materials can host low-energy relativistic quasiparticles. Under strong magnetic fields, the topological properties of Dirac/Weyl materials can directly manifest through quantum Hall states. However, most Dirac/Weyl nodes generically exist in semimetals without exploitable bandgaps due to their accidental band-crossing origin. Here we report the first experimental observation of Weyl fermions in a semiconductor. Tellurene, the 2D form of tellurium, possesses chiral crystal structure which induces unconventional Weyl nodes with a hedgehog-like radial spin texture near the conduction band edge. We synthesize high-quality n-type tellurene by a hydrothermal method with subsequent dielectric doping and detect a topologically non-trivial pi Berry phase in quantum Hall sequences. Our work expands the spectrum of Weyl matter into semiconductors and offers a new platform to design novel quantum devices by marrying the advantages of topological materials to versatile semiconductors.
We report on the fabrication and transport studies of a single-layer graphene p-n junction. Carrier type and density in two adjacent regions are individually controlled by electrostatic gating using a local top gate and a global back gate. A functionalized Al203 oxide that adheres to graphene and does not significantly affect its electronic properties is described. Measurements in the quantum Hall regime reveal new plateaus of two-terminal conductance across the junction at 1 and 3/2 times the quantum of conductance, e2/h, consistent with theory.
Tellurium (Te) is a narrow bandgap semiconductor with a unique chiral crystal structure. The topological nature of electrons in the Te conduction band can be studied by realizing n-type doping using atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique on two-dimensional (2D) Te film. In this work, we fabricated and measured the double-gated n-type Te Hall-bar devices, which can operate as two separate or coupled electron layers controlled by the top gate and back gate. Profound Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations are observed in both top and bottom electron layers. Landau level hybridization between two layers, compound and charge-transferable bilayer quantum Hall states at filling factor 4, 6, and 8 are analyzed. Our work opens the door for the study of Weyl physics in coupled bilayer systems of 2D materials.
The observation of the anomalous quantum Hall effect in exfoliated graphene flakes triggered an explosion of interest in graphene. It was however not observed in high quality epitaxial graphene multilayers grown on silicon carbide substrates. The quantum Hall effect is shown on epitaxial graphene monolayers that were deliberately grown over substrate steps and subjected to harsh processing procedures, demonstrating the robustness of the epitaxial graphene monolayers and the immunity of their transport properties to temperature, contamination and substrate imperfections. The mobility of the monolayer C-face sample is 19,000 cm^2/Vs. This is an important step towards the realization of epitaxial graphene based electronics.
The experimental verification of chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals is an active area of investigation in modern condensed matter physics, which typically relies on the combined signatures of longitudinal magnetoconductance (LMC) along with the planar Hall effect (PHE). It has recently been shown that for weak non-quantizing magnetic fields, a sufficiently strong finite intervalley scattering drives the system to switch the sign of LMC from positive to negative. Here we unravel another independent source that produces the same effect. Specifically, a smooth lattice cutoff to the linear dispersion, which is ubiquitous in real Weyl materials, introduces nonlinearity in the problem and also drives the system to exhibit negative LMC for non-collinear electric and magnetic fields even in the limit of vanishing intervalley scattering. We examine longitudinal magnetoconductivity and the planar Hall effect semi-analytically for a lattice model of tilted Weyl fermions within the Boltzmann approximation. We independently study the effects of a finite lattice cutoff and tilt parameters and construct phase diagrams in relevant parameter spaces that are relevant for diagnosing chiral anomaly in real Weyl materials.
When electrons are confined in two dimensions and subjected to strong magnetic fields, the Coulomb interactions between them become dominant and can lead to novel states of matter such as fractional quantum Hall liquids. In these liquids electrons linked to magnetic flux quanta form complex composite quasipartices, which are manifested in the quantization of the Hall conductivity as rational fractions of the conductance quantum. The recent experimental discovery of an anomalous integer quantum Hall effect in graphene has opened up a new avenue in the study of correlated 2D electronic systems, in which the interacting electron wavefunctions are those of massless chiral fermions. However, due to the prevailing disorder, graphene has thus far exhibited only weak signatures of correlated electron phenomena, despite concerted experimental efforts and intense theoretical interest. Here, we report the observation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in ultraclean suspended graphene, supporting the existence of strongly correlated electron states in the presence of a magnetic field. In addition, at low carrier density graphene becomes an insulator with an energy gap tunable by magnetic field. These newly discovered quantum states offer the opportunity to study a new state of matter of strongly correlated Dirac fermions in the presence of large magnetic fields.