Black phosphorus consists of stacked layers of phosphorene, a two-dimensional semiconductor with promising device characteristics. We report the realization of a widely tunable band gap in few-layer black phosphorus doped with potassium using an in situ surface doping technique. Through band structure measurements and calculations, we demonstrate that a vertical electric field from dopants modulates the band gap, owing to the giant Stark effect, and tunes the material from a moderate-gap semiconductor to a band-inverted semimetal. At the critical field of this band inversion, the material becomes a Dirac semimetal with anisotropic dispersion, linear in armchair and quadratic in zigzag directions. The tunable band structure of black phosphorus may allow great flexibility in design and optimization of electronic and optoelectronic devices.
van der Waals two-dimensional
(2D) semiconductors have emerged
as a class of materials with promising device characteristics owing
to the intrinsic band gap. For realistic applications, the ideal is
to modify the band gap in a controlled manner by a mechanism that
can be generally applied to this class of materials. Here, we report
the observation of a universally tunable band gap in the family of
bulk 2H transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) by
in situ surface doping of Rb atoms. A series of angle-resolved photoemission
spectra unexceptionally shows that the band gap of TMDs at the zone
corners is modulated in the range of 0.8–2.0 eV, which covers
a wide spectral range from visible to near-infrared, with a tendency
from indirect to direct band gap. A key clue to understanding the
mechanism of this band-gap engineering is provided by the spectroscopic
signature of symmetry breaking and resultant spin-splitting, which
can be explained by the formation of 2D electric dipole layers within
the surface bilayer of TMDs. Our results establish the surface Stark
effect as a universal mechanism of band-gap engineering on the basis
of the strong 2D nature of van der Waals semiconductors.
The electronic band structure of the 2D kagome net hosts two different types of van Hove singularities (vHs) arising from an intrinsic electron-hole asymmetry. The distinct sublattice flavors (pure and mixed, p-type and m-type) and pairing instabilities associated to the two types of vHs are key to understand the unconventional many-body phases of the kagome lattice. Here, in a recently discovered kagome metal CsV3Sb5 exhibiting charge order and superconductivity, we have examined the vHs, Fermi surface nesting, and many-body gap opening. Using high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we identify multiple vHs coexisting near the Fermi level of CsV3Sb5, including both p-and mtypes of vHs emerging from dxz/dyz kagome bands and a p-type vHs from dxy/dx2-y2 kagome bands. Among the multiple vHs, the m-type vHs is located closest to the Fermi level and is characterized by sharp Fermi surface nesting and gap opening across the charge order transition. Our work reveals the essential role of kagome-derived vHs as a driving mechanism for the collective phenomena realized in the AV3Sb5 family (A = K, Rb, Cs) and paves the way for a deeper understanding of strongly correlated topological kagome systems.
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