arXiv subjects

Lishu Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Lishu Zhang.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Orbital Hall Effect Enables Field-Free Magnetization Reversal in Ferrimagnets without Additional Conversion Layer

The spin Hall effect provides a well-established route for electrical magnetization control, while the orbital Hall effect offers a powerful yet less explored source of angular momentum. Achieving field-free deterministic switching in straightforward orbital-torque architectures remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate orbital-Hall-current-driven switching in a Mo/CoGd bilayer without the need for a separate orbital-to-spin conversion layer across a wide temperature range. In this simplified geometry, Mo serves as both an orbital and spin current source. However, the spin contribution is insufficient due to weak spin-orbit coupling, which is consistent with first-principles calculations predicting a large orbital Hall conductivity. The adjacent ferrimagnetic CoGd layer provides both orbital-to-spin conversion and the perpendicular switching medium. Planar Hall and current-induced loop-shift measurements reveal a substantial unconventional z-polarized damping-like torque originating from interfacial symmetry breaking. Increasing the Mo thickness from 0.2 to 2 nm increases torque efficiency by approximately 31% (y-polarized) and 71% (z-polarized) components. This enhancement enables field-free deterministic switching with a critical current density down to 2.51 x 10^6 A cm^-2. Our results establish Mo/CoGd bilayers as a compact platform for orbital-current switching and point toward low-power orbitronic memory devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Engineering Molecular Rectification: Mechanisms, Modulation Strategies, and Device Integration

Molecular rectifiers, as prototypical components of molecular electronics, present unique opportunities for pushing device miniaturization to its ultimate limits. Nevertheless, challenges including limited rectification ratios (RR), insufficient robustness, and poor reproducibility impede their practical deployment. To make molecular rectifiers competitive with silicon-based devices, it is important to fully understand the design principles and fabrication methods from both mechanistic and experimental perspectives. By holistically considering the transport mechanisms, modulation strategies, fabrication, characterization techniques, and theoretical simulations, this review provides a comprehensive overview of molecular rectifiers. Representative examples of conceptually significant and high-performance molecular rectifier systems are highlighted to illustrate the relationships between rectification mechanisms, molecular design strategies, and device realization. Building on these discussions, we present an outlook for current bottlenecks and future directions to guide the development of molecular rectifiers. This review aims to serve as both a conceptual framework and a technical reference for researchers working at the intersection of molecular electronics and nanoscale device engineering in the post-CMOS era.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Selective Fermi-Level Pinning: A Design Strategy for Giant Rectification in Molecular Junctions

Molecular rectifiers are key functional components of molecular-scale integrated circuits, yet achieving high rectification ratios remains a longstanding challenge due to the intrinsic symmetry of resonant tunneling and the complexity of interfacial energy-level alignment. Here, we propose a rectifier design strategy based on selective Fermi-level pinning that breaks transport symmetry via pinning interactions between molecular frontier orbitals and electrodes. This framework enforces tunneling transport to be predominantly governed by unoccupied molecular orbitals, while substantially suppressing contributions from occupied states, thereby establishing a simplified and highly controllable rectification mechanism. The resulting cyclo[n]carbon-based molecular junctions exhibit giant rectification ratios exceeding 103, while retaining exceptional structural robustness against variations in both donor chain length and carbon ring size. This work reveals the critical role of selective Fermi-level pinning in molecular junctions and provides a general design principle for engineering functional single-molecule electronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Termination-Preserved Ultra-high Tunneling Magnetoresistance in Altermagnetic KV2Se2O

Altermagnets exhibit nonrelativistic spin splitting without net magnetization, establishing a new platform for next-generation spintronic devices. Although altermagnetic tunnel junctions (AMTJs) represent the most promising realizations, their practical applications are hindered by low tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) ratios and strong sensitivity to interfacial configurations. Here, we systematically explore the transport properties and microscopic mechanisms of AMTJs based on the recently discovered d-wave altermagnet KV2Se2O. Using first-principles calculations and orbital-resolved analysis, we demonstrate that the synergy between compressed nodal-point like spin-degenerate channels and coplanar interfacial magnetic order yields an ultra-high intrinsic TMR above 105% for all interfacial terminations. More importantly, K-termination effectively preserves bulk spin polarization through its unique passivation characteristics, leading to an ultra-high TMR up to 1012%. These results identify the coupling between momentum-space topology and interfacial passivation provides a reliable strategy for realizing giant magnetoresistive responses in altermagnetic spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Lifting spin degeneracy in rhombohedral trilayer graphene for high magnetoresistance applications

Many exotic properties in rhombohedral (or ABC-stacked) multilayer graphene have recently been reported experimentally. In this Letter, we first reveal the underlying mechanism of spin degeneracy lifting in rhombohedral trilayer graphene. Then, we propose a design concept for all-rhombohedral graphene-based magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) by utilizing pristine, back-gated, and top-gated ABC-stacked trilayer graphene, which exhibit semimetallic (conducting), semiconducting (insulating), and half-metallic (ferromagnetic) behavior, respectively. This enables the realization of an "all-in-one" magnetic tunnel junction based entirely on trilayer graphene. This design enables voltage-controlled spintronics (lower power than conventional MTJs) with perfect interfacial matching and sub-nm thickness uniformity across 4-inch wafers. Using first-principles calculations and the non-equilibrium Greens function, we comprehensively study electronic structures and transport properties of these all-graphene MTJs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that their characteristics can be tuned via a perpendicular electric field and electron doping. Our findings offer a new concept for the development of fully graphene-based spintronic devices utilizing the three distinct electronic phases of rhombohedral trilayer graphene.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Coexistence and tunability of orbital and spin Hall effects in RuO$_2$

Altermagnetic materials, especially RuO$_2$, have recently attracted considerable attention for their unique magnetic properties and energy-efficient spintronic applications. However, recent experimental studies have reported highly conflicting signatures regarding altermagnetic spin splitting and charge--spin interconversion (CSI) in RuO$_2$. While some experiments link efficient CSI to non-relativistic altermagnetic spin-splitting effects, others observe large CSI signals in non-spin-splitting RuO$_2$, which are instead explained by relativistic inverse spin Hall effects. In this work, based on first-principles calculations, we reveal that these controversial experimental results originate from a phase-dependent coexistence and relative dominance of the orbital Hall effect (OHE) and spin Hall effect (SHE) in RuO$_2$. We systematically investigate the OHE and SHE in both altermagnetic and nonmagnetic phases of RuO$_2$. Our results show that the altermagnetic state hosts a giant OHE that exceeds the SHE by two orders of magnitude and carries an opposite sign. This dominant OHE can generate experimentally observed "SHE-like" voltages through orbital-to-spin conversion, explaining previously reported altermagnetic CSI signals. In contrast, OHE of nonmagnetic RuO$_2$ is suppressed and a large relativistic SHE emerges, in agreement with recent angle-resolved photoemission and spin-pumping experiments. Finally, we demonstrate that the coexistence of OHE and SHE is tunable via chemical doping, enabling on-demand modulation of CSI in in RuO$_2$. Our work provides a new physical mechanism for understanding CSI in RuO$_2$ and highlights the central role of orbital transport.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Van der Waals Spin-Orbit Torque Antiferromagnetic Memory

The technique of conventional ferromagnet/heavy-metal spin-orbit torque (SOT) offers significant potential for enhancing the efficiency of magnetic memories. However, it faces fundamental physical limitations, including hunting effects from the metallic layer, broken symmetry for enabling antidamping switching, spin scattering caused by interfacial defects, and sensitivity to stray magnetic fields. To address these issues, we here propose a van der Waals (vdW) field-free SOT antiferromagnetic memory using a vdW bilayer LaBr$_2$ (an antiferromagnet with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy) and a monolayer T$_d$ phase WTe$_2$ (a Weyl semimetal with broken inversion symmetry). By systematically employing density functional theory in conjunction with non-equilibrium Green's function methods and macrospin simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed vdW SOT devices exhibit remarkably low critical current density approximately 10 MA/cm$^2$ and rapid field-free magnetization switching in 250 ps. This facilitates excellent write performance with extremely low energy consumption. Furthermore, the device shows a significantly low read error rate, as evidenced by a high tunnel magnetoresistance ratio of up to 4250%. The superior write and read performance originates from the unique strong on-site (insulating phase) and off-site (magnetic phase) Coulomb interactions in electride LaBr$_2$, a large non-zero z-component polarization in WTe$_2$, and the proximity effect between them.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Current-driven magnetic resistance in van der Waals spin-filter antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions with MnBi$_2$Te$_4$

The field of 2D magnetic materials has paved the way for the development of spintronics and nanodevices with new functionalities. Utilizing antiferromagnetic materials, in addition to layered van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnetic materials, has garnered significant interest. In this work, we present a theoretical investigation of the behavior of MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ devices based on the non-equilibrium Green's function method. Our results show that the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics can be influenced significantly by controlling the length of the device and bias voltage and thus allow us to manipulate the tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR) with an external bias voltage. This can be further influenced by the presence of the boron nitride layer which shows significantly enhanced TMR by selectively suppressing specific spin channels for different magnetic configurations. By exploiting this mechanism, the observed TMR value reaches up to 3690\%, which can be attributed to the spin-polarized transmission channel and the projected local density of states. Our findings on the influence of structural and magnetic configurations on the spin-polarized transport properties and TMR ratios give the potential implementation of antiferromagnetic vdW layered materials in ultrathin spintronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Emergent Topological Superconductor by Charge Density Wave Transition

Many-body instabilities and topological physics are two attractive topics in condensed matter physics. It is intriguing to explore the interplay between these phenomena in a single quantum material. Here, using the prototypical charge density wave (CDW) material monolayer 1H-NbSe$_2$ as an example, we show how momentum-dependent electron-phonon coupling drives the CDW transition from $3\times3$ to $2\times2$ phase under electron doping. More interestingly, we find the coexistence of superconductivity and nontrivial topology in one of the two $2\times2$ CDW phases, the latter of which is identified by the nonzero Z$_2$ invariant with ideal Dirac cone edge states near the Fermi level. A similar CDW transition-induced topological superconductor has also been confirmed in monolayer 1H-TaSe$_2$. Our findings not only reveal a unique and general method to introduce nontrivial topology by CDW transition, but also provide an ideal platform to modulate different quantum orders by electron doping, thus stimulating experimental interest.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Ultrathin quantum light source enabled by a nonlinear van der Waals crystal with vanishing interlayer-electronic-coupling

Interlayer electronic coupling in two-dimensional (2D) materials enables tunable and emergent properties by stacking engineering. However, it also brings significant evolution of electronic structures and attenuation of excitonic effects in 2D semiconductors as exemplified by quickly degrading excitonic photoluminescence and optical nonlinearities in transition metal dichalcogenides when monolayers are stacked into van der Waals structures. Here we report a novel van der Waals crystal, niobium oxide dichloride, featuring a vanishing interlayer electronic coupling and scalable second harmonic generation intensity of up to three orders higher than that of exciton-resonant monolayer WS2. Importantly, the strong second-order nonlinearity enables correlated parametric photon pair generation, via a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process, in flakes as thin as ~46 nm. To our knowledge, this is the first SPDC source unambiguously demonstrated in 2D layered materials, and the thinnest SPDC source ever reported. Our work opens an avenue towards developing van der Waals material-based ultracompact on-chip SPDC sources, and high-performance photon modulators in both classical and quantum optical technologies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Recent progress and challenges in magnetic tunnel junctions with 2D materials for spintronic applications

As Moore's law is gradually losing its effectiveness, developing alternative high-speed and low-energy-consuming information technology with post-silicon advanced materials is urgently needed. The successful application of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) has given rise to a tremendous economic impact on magnetic informatics, including MRAM, radio-frequency sensors, microwave generators and neuromorphic computing networks. The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) materials brings opportunities for MTJs based on 2D materials which have many attractive characters and advantages. Especially, the recently discovered intrinsic 2D ferromagnetic materials with high spin-polarization hold the promise for next-generation nanoscale MTJs. With the development of advanced 2D materials, many efforts on MTJs with 2D materials have been made both theoretically and experimentally. Various 2D materials, such as semi-metallic graphene, insulating h-BN, semiconducting MoS2, magnetic semiconducting CrI3, magnetic metallic Fe3GeTe2 and some other recently emerged 2D materials are discussed as the electrodes and/or central scattering materials of MTJs in this review. We discuss the fundamental and main issues facing MTJs, and review the current progress made with 2D MTJs, briefly comment on work with some specific 2D materials, and highlight how they address the current challenges in MTJs, and finally offer an outlook and perspective of 2D MTJs.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗