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Guowei Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Guowei Zhang.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Strain-tunable van der Waals interactions in few-layer black phosphorus

Interlayer interactions in 2D materials, also known as van der Waals (vdWs) interactions, play a critical role in the physical properties of layered materials. It is fascinating to manipulate the vdWs interaction, and hence to "redefine" the material properties. Here, we demonstrate that in-plane biaxial strain can effectively tune the vdWs interaction of few-layer black phosphorus with thickness of 2-10 layers, using infrared spectroscopy. Surprisingly, our results reveal that in-plane tensile strain efficiently weakens the interlayer coupling, even though the sample shrinks in the vertical direction due to the Poisson effect, in sharp contrast to one's intuition. Moreover, density functional theory (DFT) calculations further confirm our observations and indicate a dominant role of the puckered lattice structure. Our study highlights the important role played by vdWs interactions in 2D materials during external physical perturbations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Drastic enhancement of the Raman intensity in few-layer InSe by uniaxial strain

The vibrational and electronic properties of 2-dimensinal (2D) materials can be efficiently tuned by external strain due to their good stretchability. Resonant Raman spectroscopy is a versatile tool to study the physics of phonons, electrons and their interactions simultaneously, which is particularly useful for the investigation of strain effect on 2D materials. Here, for the first time, we report the resonant Raman study of strained few-layer InSe (γ-phase). Under ~ 1% of uniaxial tensile strain, one order of magnitude enhancement of Raman intensity for longitudinal optical (LO) phonon is observed, while other modes exhibit only modest change. Further analysis demonstrates that it arises from the intraband electron-phonon scattering channel for LO phonon in resonance. The large enhancement of Raman intensity provides us a sensitive and novel method to characterize the strain effect and a mapping of the strain distribution in a wrinkled sample is demonstrated. In addition, we observed sizable redshifts of first-order optical phonon modes. The shift rate exhibits phonon mode dependence, in excellent agreement with density functional perturbation theory (DFPT) calculations. Our study paves the way for sensitive strain quantification in few-layer InSe and its application in flexible electronic and optoelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Electronic structures of air-exposed few-layer black phosphorus by optical spectroscopy

The electronic structure of few-layer(FL) black phosphorus(BP) sensitively depends on the sample thickness, strain and doping. In this paper, we show that it is also vulnerable to air-exposure. The oxidation of BP caused by air-exposure gives several optical signatures, including the broadening of resonance peaks and increased Stokes shift between infrared (IR) absorption and photoluminescence (PL) peaks. More importantly, air exposure causes blue shifts of all resonance peaks in IR absorption and PL spectra, with more prominent effects for thinner samples and higher order subband transitions. Our study alludes a convenient and exotic way for band-structure engineering of FL-BP through controllable air-exposure or defect creation.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Palladium Diselenide Long-Wavelength Infrared Photodetector with High Sensitivity and Stability

A long-wavelength infrared (IR) photodetector based on two-dimensional materials working at room temperature would have wide applications in many aspects in remote sensing, thermal imaging, biomedical optics, and medical imaging. However, sub-bandgap light detection in graphene and black phosphorus has been a long-standing scientific challenge because of low photoresponsivity, instability in the air and highdark current. In this study, we report a highly sensitive, air-stable and operable long-wavelength infrared photodetector at room temperature based on PdSe2 phototransistors and its heterostructure. A high photoresponsivity of ~42.1 AW-1 (at 10.6 μm) was demonstrated, which is an order of magnitude higher than the current record of platinum diselenide. Moreover, the dark current and noise power density were suppressed effectively by fabricating a van der Waals heterostructure. This work fundamentally contributes to establishing long-wavelength infrared detection by PdSe2 at the forefront of long-IR two-dimensional-materials-based photonics.

physics.app-ph↗

Determination of layer-dependent exciton binding energies in few-layer black phosphorus

The attraction between electrons and holes in semiconductors forms excitons, which largely determine the optical properties of the hosting material, and hence the device performance, especially for low-dimensional systems. Mono- and few-layer black phosphorus (BP) are emerging two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. Despite its fundamental importance and technological interest, experimental investigation of exciton physics has been rather limited. Here, we report the first systematic measurement of exciton binding energies in ultrahigh quality few-layer BP by infrared absorption spectroscopy, with layer (L) thickness ranging from 2-6 layers. Our experiments allow us to determine the exciton binding energy, decreasing from 213 meV (2L) to 106 meV (6L). The scaling behavior with layer number can be well described by an analytical model, which takes into account the nonlocal screening effect. Extrapolation to free-standing monolayer yields a large binding energy of ~800 meV. Our study provides insights into 2D excitons and their crossover from 2D to 3D, and demonstrates that few-layer BP is a promising high-quality optoelectronic material for potential infrared applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Design and Analysis of Passband Transmitted Reference Pulse Cluster UWB Systems in the Presence of Phase Noise

Transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) signaling was recently proposed and developed for noncoherent ultra-wideband (UWB) communications. In this paper, a practical passband TRPC-UWB system is designed and analyzed to deal with the carrier frequency offset, phase offset and phase noise inherent in voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO) of the transmitter and the receiver. Based on a general model of noisy VCO and employing some reasonable assumptions, an equivalent linear time-invariant (LTI) analytical model is obtained to facilitate the bit error rate (BER) analysis. Our analysis shows that the constant carrier frequency offset and the phase offset can be removed by employing the passband transmitter and the noncoherent receiver. Furthermore, a semi-analytical BER expression is derived to show the impact of phase noise on the system error performance. Simulation results validate the semi-analytical expressions and both of them indicate that TRPC is more robust to the effect of phase noise than conventional transmitted reference (TR) and coherent UWB Rake receivers.

eess.SP↗

Largely tunable band structures of few-layer InSe by uniaxial strain

Due to the strong quantum confinement effect, few-layer γ-InSe exhibits a layer-dependent bandgap, spanning the visible and near infrared regions, and thus recently draws tremendous attention. As a two-dimensional material, the mechanical flexibility provides an additional tuning knob for the electronic structure. Here, for the first time, we engineer the band structures of few-layer and bulk-like InSe by uniaxial tensile strain, and observe salient shift of photoluminescence (PL) peaks. The shift rate of the optical gap is approximately 90-100 meV per 1% strain for 4- to 8-layer samples, which is much larger than that for the widely studied MoS2 monolayer. Density functional calculations well reproduce the observed layer-dependent bandgaps and the strain effect, and reveal that the shift rate decreases with increasing layer number for few-layer InSe. Our study demonstrates that InSe is a very versatile 2D electronic and optoelectronic material, which is suitable for tunable light emitters, photo-detectors and other optoelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Infrared fingerprints of few-layer black phosphorus

Black phosphorus is an infrared layered material. Its bandgap complements other widely studied two-dimensional materials: zero-gap graphene and visible/near-infrared gap transition metal dichalcogenides. Though highly desirable, a comprehensive infrared characterization is still lacking. Here we report a systematic infrared study of mechanically exfoliated few-layer black phosphorus, with thickness ranging from 2 to 15 layers and photon energy spanning from 0.25 to 1.36 eV. Each few-layer black phosphorus exhibits a thickness-dependent unique infrared spectrum with a series of absorption resonances, which reveals the underlying electronic structure evolution and serves as its IR fingerprints. Surprisingly, unexpected absorption features, which are associated with the forbidden optical transitions, have been observed. Furthermore, we unambiguously demonstrate that controllable uniaxial strain can be used as a convenient and effective approach to tune the electronic structure of few-layer black phosphorus. Our study paves the way for black phosphorus applications in infrared photonics and optoelectronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Graphene plasmonics: Physics and potential applications

Plasmon in graphene possesses many unique properties. It originates from the collective motion of massless Dirac fermions and the carrier density dependence is distinctively different from conventional plasmons. In addition, graphene plasmon is highly tunable and shows strong energy confinement capability. Most intriguing, as an atom-thin layer, graphene and its plasmon are very sensitive to the immediate environment. Graphene plasmons strongly couple to polar phonons of the substrate, molecular vibrations of the adsorbates, and lattice vibrations of other atomically thin layers. In this review paper, we'll present the most important advances in grapene plasmonics field. The topics include terahertz plasmons, mid-infrared plasmons, plasmon-phonon interactions and potential applications. Graphene plasmonics opens an avenue for reconfigurable metamaterials and metasurfaces. It's an exciting and promising new subject in the nanophotonics and plasmonics research field.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗