“…The EI phase of semimetals and small gap semiconductors has been proposed long ago [64][65][66][67][68][69][70]. Calculations on the stability of the EI phase against screening effects have been pioneered by Nozieres and Compte [71], and subsequently performed in different bilayered compounds, including dipolar systems [72], graphene [73][74][75], and TMD [76]. However, how a screened electron-hole interaction affects the stability of a NEQ-EI has, to our knowledge, not yet been addressed.…”