Search Results (4)

The strain in hybrid van der Waals heterostructures, made of two distinct two-dimensional van der Waals materials, offers an interesting handle on their corresponding electronic band structure. Such strain can be engineered by changing the relative crystallographic orientation between the constitutive monolayers, notably, the angular misorientation, also known as the “twist angle”. By combining angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with density functional theory calculations, we investigate here the band structure of the WS₂/graphene heterobilayer for various twist angles. Despite the relatively weak coupling between WS₂ and graphene, we demonstrate that the resulting strain quantitatively affects many electronic features of the WS₂ monolayers, including the spin-orbit coupling strength. In particular, we show that the WS₂ spin-orbit splitting of the valence band maximum at K can be tuned from 430 to 460 meV. Our findings open perspectives in controlling the band dispersion of van der Waals materials. Full article

The electronic properties of strontium ruthenate ${\mathrm{SrRuO}}_3$ perovskite oxide thin films are modified by epitaxial strain, as determined by growing on different substrates by pulsed laser deposition. Temperature dependence of the transport properties indicates that tensile strain deformation of the ${\mathrm{SrRuO}}_3$ unit cell reduces the metallicity of the material as well as its metal-insulator-transition (MIT) temperature. On the contrary, the shrinkage of the Ru–O–Ru buckling angle due to compressive strain is counterweighted by the increased overlap of the conduction Ru-4d orbitals with the O-2p ones due to the smaller interatomic distances resulting into an increased MIT temperature, i.e., a more conducting material. In particular, in the more metallic samples, the core level X-ray photoemission spectroscopy lineshapes show the occurrence of an extra-peak at the lower binding energies of the main Ru-3d peak that is attributed to screening, as observed in volume sensitive photoemission of the unstrained material. Full article

A translation-invariant (TI) bipolaron theory of superconductivity based, like Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory, on Fröhlich Hamiltonian is presented. Here the role of Cooper pairs belongs to TI bipolarons which are pairs of spatially delocalized electrons whose correlation length of a coupled state is small. The presence of Fermi surface leads to the stabilization of such states in its vicinity and a possibility of their Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC). The theory provides a natural explanation of the existence of a pseudogap phase preceding the superconductivity and enables one to estimate the temperature of a transition $T^{*}$ from a normal state to a pseudogap one. It is shown that the temperature of BEC of TI bipolarons determines the temperature of a superconducting transition $T_c$ which depends not on the bipolaron effective mass but on the ordinary mass of a band electron. This removes restrictions on the upper limit of $T_c$ for a strong electron-phonon interaction. A natural explanation is provided for the angular dependence of the superconducting gap which is determined by the angular dependence of the phonon spectrum. It is demonstrated that a lot of experiments on thermodynamic and transport characteristics, Josephson tunneling and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) of high-temperature superconductors does not contradict the concept of a TI bipolaron mechanism of superconductivity in these materials. Possible ways of enhancing $T_c$ and producing new room-temperature superconductors are discussed on the basis of the theory suggested. Full article

The evolution of the electron band structure upon the reduction of Sb film on a Si(111)-(6 × 6)Au substrate, relevant to topological insulator properties, is experimentally systematically investigated by the reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), in situ surface electron transport and angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy methods. The experiments reveal that a bilayer (BL) of Sb is crystalline but the subsequent three BLs on top of it form amorphous layers. The five-BL-thick film transforms back to the crystalline form. The bilayer as well as 1.2- and 3.8-BL-thick films show the electron band structure with a relatively large energy gap at the Γ point of the Brillouin zone. The theoretically predicted band structure is observed at 4.8 BL coverage. Full article