Valley polarization in transition metal dichalcogenide layered semiconductors:Generation,relaxation,manipulation and transport

In recent years,valleytronics researches based on 2D semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted considerable attention.On the one hand,strong spin–orbit interaction allows the presence of spin–valley coupling in this system,which provides spin addressable valley degrees of freedom for information storage and processing.On the other hand,large exciton binding energy up to hundreds of me V enables excitons to be stable carriers of valley information.Valley polarization,marked by an imbalanced exciton population in two inequivalent valleys(+K and-K),is the core of valleytronics as it can be utilized to store binary information.Motivated by the potential applications,we present a thorough overview of the recent advancements in the generation,relaxation,manipulation,and transport of the valley polarization in nonmagnetic transition metal dichalcogenide layered semiconductors.We also discuss the development of valleytronic devices and future challenges in this field.

Photoelectrocatalytic hydrogen peroxide production based on transition‐metal‐oxide semiconductors

As a kind of valuable chemicals,hydrogen peroxide(H2O2)has aroused growing attention in many fields.However,H2O2 production via traditional anthraquinone process suffers from challenges of large energy consumption and heavy carbon footprint.Alternatively,photoelectrocatalytic(PEC)production of H2O2 has shown great promises to make H2O2 a renewable fuel to store solar energy.Transition‐metal‐oxide(TMO)semiconductor based photoelectrocatalysts are among the most promising candidates for PEC H2O2 production.In this work,the fundamentals of H2O2 synthesis through PEC process are briefly introduced,followed by the state‐of‐the‐art of TMO semiconductor based photoelectrocatalysts for PEC production H2O2.Then,the progress on H2O2 fuel cells from on‐site PEC production is presented.Furthermore,the challenges and future perspectives of PEC H2O2 production are discussed.This review aims to provide inspiration for the PEC production of H2O2 as a renewable solar fuel.

Transforming a Two-Dimensional Layered Insulator into a Semiconductor or a Highly Conductive Metal through Transition Metal Ion Intercalation

Atomically thin two-dimensional(2D) materials are the building bricks for next-generation electronics and optoelectronics, which demand plentiful functional properties in mechanics, transport, magnetism and photoresponse.For electronic devices, not only metals and high-performance semiconductors but also insulators and dielectric materials are highly desirable. Layered structures composed of 2D materials of different properties can be delicately designed as various useful heterojunction or homojunction devices, in which the designs on the same material(namely homojunction) are of special interest because preparation techniques can be greatly simplified and atomically seamless interfaces can be achieved. We demonstrate that the insulating pristine ZnPS_3, a ternary transition-metal phosphorus trichalcogenide, can be transformed into a highly conductive metal and an n-type semiconductor by intercalating Co and Cu atoms, respectively. The field-effect-transistor(FET) devices are prepared via an ultraviolet exposure lithography technique. The Co-ZnPS_3 device exhibits an electrical conductivity of 8 × 10^(4) S/m, which is comparable to the conductivity of graphene. The Cu-ZnPS_3 FET reveals a current ON/OFF ratio of 1-05 and a mobility of 3 × 10^(-2 )cm^(2)·V^(-1)·s^(-1). The realization of an insulator, a typical semiconductor and a metallic state in the same 2D material provides an opportunity to fabricate n-metal homojunctions and other in-plane electronic functional devices.

Quantum diffusion in bilateral doped chains

In this paper, we quantitatively study the quantum diffusion in a bilateral doped chain, which is randomly doped on both sides. A tight binding approximation and quantum dynamics are used to calculate the three electronic characteristics： autocorrelation function C（t）, the mean square displacement d（t） and the participation number P（E） in different doping situations. The results show that the quantum diffusion is more sensitive to the small ratio of doping than to the big one, there exists a critical doping ratio qo, and C（t）, d（t） and P（E） have different variation trends on different sides of qo. For the self-doped chain, the doped atoms have tremendous influence on the central states of P（E）, which causes the electronic states distributed in other energy bands to aggregate to the central band （E = 0） and form quasi-mobility edges there. All of the doped systems experience an incomplete transition of metal-semiconductor-metal.

Theoretical Investigation on Self-passivation in Bare Zigzag Phosphorene Nanoribbons

Several bare zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons with odd number of atoms in the direction perpendicular to the extended line are investigated by using HSE06 density functional theory.These nanoribbons are as stable as those with even number of atoms.Primitive cells of the nanoribbons are metals,while edge self-passivation and distortion in the supercell structures cause metal-semiconductor transition.The band gaps of semiconducting nanoribbons are around 0.4 eV,which is enough for high on/off ratio in device operation.Compared to the conduction bands,the valence bands have smaller deformation potential constants and larger band width.Thus,the hole mobilities of the nanoribbons（10 cm^2·V^（-1）·s^（-1）） are one order higher than the electron mobilities.Bare zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons with odd number of atoms can also be candidates for small-size high-speed electronic devices.

Controlling phase transition in WSe_(2) towards ideal n-type transistor

Two-dimensional(2D)transition metal dichalcogenides(TMDs)have been rapidly established as promising building blocks for versatile atomic scale circuits and multifunctional devices.However,the high contact resistance in TMDs based transistors seriously hinders their applications in complementary electronics.In this work,we show that an Ohmic homojunction n-type tungsten diselenide(WSe_(2))transistor is realized through spatially controlling cesium(Cs)doping region near the contacts.We find that the remarkable electron doping effect of Cs stimulates a semiconductor to metal(2H to 1T')phase transition in WSe_(2),and hence the formation of 2H-1T’hetero-phase contact.Our method significantly optimizes the WSe_(2) transport behavior with a perfect low subthreshold swing of-61 mV/dec and ultrahigh current on/off ratio exceeding-10^(9).Meanwhile,the electron mobility is enhanced by nearly 50 times.We elucidate that the ideal n-type behavior originates from the negligible Schottky barrier height of~19 meV and low contact resistance of-0.9Ωk·μm in the 2H-1T’homojunction device.Moreover,based on the Ohmic hetero-phase configuration,a WSe_(2) inverter is achieved with a high gain of~270 and low power consumption of-28 pW.Our findings envision Cs functionalization as an effective method to realize ideal Ohmic contact in 2D WSe_(2) transistors towards high performance complementary electronic devices.