arXiv subjects

Emmanuele Cappelluti

Publications and source records attributed to Emmanuele Cappelluti.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Local strain engineering in atomically thin MoS2

Tuning the electronic properties of a material by subjecting it to strain constitutes an important strategy to enhance the performance of semiconducting electronic devices. Using local strain, confinement potentials for excitons can be engineered, with exciting possibilities for trapping excitons for quantum optics and for efficient collection of solar energy. Two-dimensional materials are able to withstand large strains before rupture, offering a unique opportunity to introduce large local strains. Here, we study atomically thin MoS2 layers with large local strains of up to 2.5% induced by controlled delamination from a substrate. Using simultaneous scanning Raman and photoluminescence imaging, we spatially resolve a direct bandgap reduction of up to 90 meV induced by local strain. We observe a funnel effect in which excitons drift hundreds of nanometers to lower bandgap regions before recombining, demonstrating exciton confinement by local strain. The observations are supported by an atomistic tight-binding model developed to predict the effect of inhomogeneous strain on the local electronic states in MoS2. The possibility of generating large strain-induced variations in exciton trapping potentials opens the door for a variety of applications in atomically thin materials including photovoltaics, quantum optics and two-dimensional optoelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Tunable Infrared Phonon Anomalies in Trilayer Graphene

Trilayer graphene in both ABA (Bernal) and ABC (rhombohedral) stacking sequences is shown to exhibit intense infrared absorption from in-plane optical phonons. The feature, lying at ~1580 cm-1, changes strongly with electrostatic gating. For ABC-stacked graphene trilayers, we observed a large enhancement in phonon absorption amplitude, as well as softening of the phonon mode, as the Fermi level is tuned away from charge neutrality. A similar, but substantially weaker effect is seen in samples with the more common ABA stacking order. The strong infrared response of the optical phonons and the pronounced variation with electrostatic gating and stacking-order reflect the interactions of the phonons and electronic excitations in the two systems. The key experimental findings can be reproduced within a simplified charged-phonon model that considers the influence of charging through Pauli blocking of the electronic transitions.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Electric field screening in atomically thin layers of MoS2: the role of interlayer coupling

The aim of this work is to study the electrostatic screening by single and few-layer MoS2 sheets by means of electrostatic force microscopy in combination with a non-linear Thomas-Fermi Theory to interpret the experimental results. We find that a continuum model of decoupled layers, which satisfactorily reproduces the electrostatic screening for graphene and graphite, cannot account for the experimental observations. A three-dimensional model with an interlayer hopping parameter can on the other hand successfully account for the observed electric field screening by MoS2 nanolayers, pointing out the important role of the interlayer coupling in the screening of MoS2.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Structurally Dependent Fano Resonances in the Infrared Spectra of Phonons in Few-Layer Graphene

The in-plane optical phonons around 200 meV in few-layer graphene are investigated utilizing infrared absorption spectroscopy. The phonon spectra exhibit unusual asymmetric features characteristic of Fano resonances, which depend critically on the layer thickness and stacking order of the sample. The phonon intensities in samples with rhombohedral (ABC) stacking are significantly higher than those with Bernal (AB) stacking. These observations reflect the strong coupling between phonons and interband electronic transitions in these systems and the distinctive variation in the joint density of electronic states in samples of differing thickness and stacking order.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Observation of an electrically tunable band gap in trilayer graphene

A striking feature of bilayer graphene is the induction of a significant band gap in the electronic states by the application of a perpendicular electric field. Thicker graphene layers are also highly attractive materials. The ability to produce a band gap in these systems is of great fundamental and practical interest. Both experimental and theoretical investigations of graphene trilayers with the typical ABA layer stacking have, however, revealed the lack of any appreciable induced gap. Here we contrast this behavior with that exhibited by graphene trilayers with ABC crystallographic stacking. The symmetry of this structure is similar to that of AB stacked graphene bilayers and, as shown by infrared conductivity measurements, permits a large band gap to be formed by an applied electric field. Our results demonstrate the critical and hitherto neglected role of the crystallographic stacking sequence on the induction of a band gap in few-layer graphene.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2002

Small Fermi energy and phonon anharmonicity in MgB_2 and related compounds

The remarkable anharmonicity of the E_{2g} phonon in MgB_2 has been suggested in literature to play a primary role in its superconducting pairing. We investigate, by means of LDA calculations, the microscopic origin of such an anharmonicity in MgB_2, AlB_2, and in hole-doped graphite. We find that the anharmonic character of the E_{2g} phonon is essentially driven by the small Fermi energy of the sigma holes. We present a simple analytic model which allows us to understand in microscopic terms the role of the small Fermi energy and of the electronic structure. The relation between anharmonicity and nonadiabaticity is pointed out and discussed in relation to various materials.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2001

Itinerant and localized states in strongly correlated systems by a modified mean-field slave-boson approach

The standard mean field slave-boson solution for the infinite-$U$ Hubbard model is revised. A slightly modified version is proposed which includes properly the incoherent contribution of the localized states. In contrast to the standard mean field result, this new proposed solution defines a unique spectral function to be used in the calculation of local and not local quantities, and satisfies the correct thermodynamic relations. The same approach is applied also to the mean field approximation in terms of Hubbard operators. As a byproduct of this analysis, Luttinger's theorem is shown to be fulfilled in a natural way.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv1999

Violation of Luttinger's theorem in strongly correlated electronic systems within a 1/N expansion

We study the 1/N expansion of a generic, strongly correlated electron model (SU(N) symmetric Hubbard model with $U=\infty$ and N degrees of freedom per lattice site) in terms of X operators. The leading order of the expansion describes a usual Fermi liquid with renormalized, stable particles. The next-to-leading order violates Luttinger's theorem if a finite convergence radius for the 1/N expansion for a fixed and non-vanishing doping away from half-filling is assumed. We find that the volume enclosed by the Fermi surface, is at large, but finite N's and small dopings larger than at $N=\infty$. As a by-product an explicit expression for the electronic self-energy in O(1/N) is given which cannot be obtained by factorization or mode-coupling assumptions but contains rather sophisticated vertex corrections.

cond-mat.str-el↗