arXiv subjects

Tianyou Zhai

Publications and source records attributed to Tianyou Zhai.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Imaging Intermediate Melting Phases of Dual Magnetic-Field-Stabilized Wigner Crystals

The competition between Coulomb repulsion and kinetic energy in correlated systems can allow electrons to crystallize into Wigner solids. Despite researches across diverse two-dimensional Wigner platforms, the microscopic melting processes through possible intermediate phases remains largely unknown. Here, we present the visualization of electron-lattice melting in monolayer VCl3 on graphite, where two Wigner crystals coexist with markedly different critical temperatures Tc and lattice periods as stabilized by high magnetic field. One Wigner crystal possesses both record-high Tc and electron density, and undergoes melting through an intermediate nematic phase upon decreasing magnetic field. In contrast, the other Wigner crystal with a lower Tc yields a different intermediate phase during melting, exhibiting an anomalous electron liquid with an energy-independent modulation period. First-principles calculations corroborate the band-selective occupations of interface-transferred electrons in the formation of dual Wigner crystals. Our atomically resolved intermediate phases provide crucial insights into the microscopic melting pathways of Wigner crystals, enabling a phase diagram parameterized by both quantum and thermal fluctuations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Spectral Visualization of Excitonic Pair Breaking at Individual Impurities in Ta2Pd3Te5

Excitonic insulators host the condensates of bound electron-hole pairs, offering a platform for studying correlated bosonic quantum states. Yet, how macroscopic coherence emerges from locally collapsed pairing remains elusive. Here, using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, we report the impurity-induced pair breaking in an excitonic insulator Ta2Pd3Te5. Individual Te vacancies are found to generate a pair of spectral peaks within the excitonic gap. Their energies depend sensitively on the defect configurations and are continuously tunable by tip electric field, indicating controllable impurity scatterings. Spectral mapping shows spatially anisotropic and electronically coupled electron-hole components of the subgap states. These observations, together with mean-field modelling, suggest an excitonic pair-breaking origin. In the strongly electron-hole imbalanced region, a secondary pair-breaking effect, manifesting as an additional pair of subgap states with distinctly lower energies, can emerge, presenting the interplay of pairing breakings with different excitonic order parameters. Our findings demonstrate the spectroscopic 'fingerprint' of local excitonic depairing at the atomic level, offering a crucial clue to the critical behavior across excitonic condensation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Rich unconventional Hall effects in a single quasi-kagome Kondo Weyl semimetal candidate Ce$_3$TiSb$_5$

It is generally believed that electronic correlation, geometric frustration, and topology, \textit{individually}, can facilitate the emergence of various intriguing properties that have attracted a broad audience for both fundamental research and potential applications. Here, we report a series of unconventional Hall effects observed in a \textit{single} compound - quasi-kagome Kondo Weyl semimetal candidate Ce$_3$TiSb$_5$. In the paramagnetic phase, signature of dynamic $c$-$f$ hybridization is revealed by a reduction of anomalous Hall effect and is connected to frustration-promoted incoherent Kondo scattering. A large topological Hall effect exceeding 0.2 $μΩ\cdot$cm is found at low temperatures, which should be ascribed to the non-collinear magnetic texture. In addition, a peculiar loop-shaped Hall effect with switching chirality is also seen, which is inferred to be associated with magnetic domain walls that pin history-dependent spin chirality and / or Fermi-arc surface states projected from the in-gap Weyl nodes. These exotic results place Ce$_3$TiSb$_5$ in a regime of highly-frustrated antiferromagnetic dense Kondo lattice with a nontrivial topology on an ``extended" global phase diagram, and highlight the interplay among electronic correlation, geometric frustration and topology.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

How to Identify Suitable Gate Dielectrics for Transistors based on Two-Dimensional Semiconductors

The recent progress in nanosheet transistors has established two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors as viable candidates for future ultra-scaled electronic devices. Next to reducing contact resistance, identifying good gate dielectrics is a fundamental challenge, as the dielectric/channel interface dramatically impacts virtually all performance parameters. While several promising gate dielectrics have recently been reported, the evaluation of their quality and suitability is often fragmentary and focused on selected important performance metrics of the gate stack, such as the capacitive gate control, leakage currents, reliability, and ease of fabrication and integration. However, identifying a suitable gate stack is a complex problem that has not yet been approached systematically. In this perspective, we aim to formulate general criteria for good gate dielectrics.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2024

Predicting the future applications of any stoichiometric inorganic material through learning from past literature

Through learning from past literature, artificial intelligence models have been able to predict the future applications of various stoichiometric inorganic materials in a variety of subfields of materials science. This capacity offers exciting opportunities for boosting the research and development (R&D) of new functional materials. Unfortunately, the previous models can only provide the prediction for existing materials in past literature, but cannot predict the applications of new materials. Here, we construct a model that can predict the applications of any stoichiometric inorganic material (regardless of whether it is a new material). Historical validation confirms the high reliability of our model. Key to our model is that it allows the generation of the word embedding of any stoichiometric inorganic material, which cannot be achieved by the previous models. This work constructs a powerful model, which can predict the future applications of any stoichiometric inorganic material using only a laptop, potentially revolutionizing the R&D paradigm for new functional materials

physics.app-ph↗