arXiv subjects

Yabei Wu

Publications and source records attributed to Yabei Wu.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Surface Charge Doping for Ion-Pairing Criticality in Confined Electrolytes

Dielectric confinement strengthens Coulomb correlations in quasi-two-dimensional electrolytes and can promote Bjerrum pairing in charge-neutral slits. Here we use a generalized Debye-Huckel-Bjerrum theory to show that weak surface charge changes this picture by stoichiometrically doping the slit with mobile counterions. These counterions maintain a finite screening floor, decouple microscopic pairing from macroscopic ionicity, and shift association-driven criticality to lower temperatures. The critical-temperature suppression collapses onto a single scaled perturbation variable, revealing how surface charge and dielectric confinement jointly control charged nanofluidic slits. Brownian-dynamics tests further show that the same counterions are not always fully bulk-like diffusive: at low intrinsic salt density, explicit wall charge slows in-plane diffusion, whereas at higher intrinsic density the wall-induced diffusion penalty decreases and the mobile-counterion description becomes dynamically accurate. These results identify surface charge as a thermodynamic doping field that tunes both correlated ionic stability and the diffusion mechanism in nanofluidic confinement.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2026

Polarization Engineering of the Orbital Hall Conductivity in Two-dimensional Ferroelectric Higher-Order Topological Insulator Tl$_2$S and SnS

Ferroelectric higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) exhibit tunable physical properties arising from the interplay between ferroelectric polarization and band topology. This work investigates the topological origin of two classes of two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectric HOTIs with out-of-plane or in-plane polarization, revealing their distinct orbital transport behaviors and the mechanism for engineering orbital Hall conductivity (OHC) via polarization control. Our results demonstrate the unique role of polarization in modulating both the higher-order band topology and orbital transport. A strong coupling between in-plane polarization and higher-order topology is identified, establishing in-plane polarization as an intrinsic means to reversibly switch the OHC plateau within the band gap. Using Tl$_2$S and SnS as representative models of the two HOTI types, we demonstrate persistent and electrically switchable orbital transport, respectively. Our study advances the understanding of the coupling among ferroelectricity, higher-order topology, and orbital transport, offering new avenues for controllable orbitronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Generative Inverse Design of Cold Metals for Low-Power Electronics

Cold metals are a class of metals with an intrinsic energy gap located close to the Fermi level, which enables cold-carrier injection for steep-slope transistors and is therefore promising for low-power electronic applications. High-throughput screening has revealed 252 three-dimensional (3D) cold metals in the Materials Project database, but database searches are inherently limited to known compounds. Here we present an inverse-design workflow that generates 3D cold metals using MatterGPT, a conditional autoregressive Transformer trained on SLICES, an invertible and symmetry-invariant crystal string representation. We curate a training set of 26,309 metallic structures labeled with energy above hull and a unified band-edge distance descriptor that merges p-type and n-type cold-metal characteristics to address severe label imbalance. Property-conditioned generation targeting thermodynamic stability and 50-500 meV band-edge distances produces 148,506 unique candidates; 92.1% are successfully reconstructed to 3D structures and down-selected by symmetry, uniqueness and novelty filters, followed by high-throughput DFT validation. We identify 257 cold metals verified as novel with respect to the Materials Project database, with gaps around the Fermi level spanning 50-500 meV. First-principles phonon, electronic-structure, and work-function calculations for representative candidates confirm dynamical stability and contact-relevant work functions. Our results demonstrate that SLICES-enabled generative transformers can expand the chemical space of cold metals beyond high-throughput screening, providing a route to low-power electronic materials discovery.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Material-Property-Field-based Deep Neural Network in Hopfield Framework

Current deep neural networks (DNNs) used in materials modeling often lack explicit physical structure and clear analytical formulations tailored to material systems, which can limit their interpretability. In this work, we integrate Material Property Fields (MPF) with the Hopfield network architecture and propose an analytically structured DNN framework named mPFDNN. MPF provides a unified framework that represents physical properties of materials as an analytical field built upon pairwise interactions, rigorously respecting fundamental symmetries, while also enabling a physically legitimate decomposition of property distributions at the atomic level. Although the Hopfield model was originally developed for Ising-like systems, we show that its dynamical evolution strategy can be naturally extended to the MPF framework. By reformulating nonlinear interatomic interactions as "hidden neurons", MPF can be extended into a deep yet analytically tractable DNN architecture that progressively captures an increasingly connected interaction landscape. This framework also provides a unified perspective that connects linear expansions and nonlinear DNN architectures within a common interaction-based formulation. Extensive validation across diverse systems, including inorganic crystals, organic molecules, and aqueous solutions, and across multiple target properties, shows that mPFDNN achieves competitive predictive accuracy while offering a physically motivated framework for structure-property mapping in chemistry, physics, and materials science.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Out-of-plane displacement of quantum color centers in monolayer h-BN

Color centers exhibiting deep-level states within the wide bandgap h-BN monolayer possess substantial potential for quantum applications. Uncovering precise geometric characteristics at the atomic scale is crucial for understanding defect performance. In this study, first-principles calculations were performed on the most extensively investigated CBVN and NBVN color centers in h-BN, focusing on the out-of-plane displacement and their specific impacts on electronic, vibrational, and emission properties. We demonstrate the competition between the {\sigma}*-like antibonding state and the {\pi}-like bonding state, which determines the out-of-plane displacement. The overall effect of vibronic coupling on geometry is elucidated using a pseudo Jahn-Teller model. Local vibrational analysis reveals a series of distinct quasi-local phonon modes that could serve as fingerprints for experimental identification of specific point defects. The critical effects of out-of-plane displacement during the quantum emission process are carefully elucidated to answer the distinct observations in experiments, and these revelations are universal in quantum point defects in other layered materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Global Universal Scaling and Ultra-Small Parameterization in Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials with Super-Linearity

Using machine learning (ML) to construct interatomic interactions and thus potential energy surface (PES) has become a common strategy for materials design and simulations. However, those current models of machine learning interatomic potential (MLIP) provide no relevant physical constrains, and thus may owe intrinsic out-of-domain difficulty which underlies the challenges of model generalizability and physical scalability. Here, by incorporating physics-informed Universal-Scaling law and nonlinearity-embedded interaction function, we develop a Super-linear MLIP with both Ultra-Small parameterization and greatly expanded expressive capability, named SUS2-MLIP. Due to the global scaling rooting in universal equation of state (UEOS), SUS2-MLIP not only has significantly-reduced parameters by decoupling the element space from coordinate space, but also naturally outcomes the out-of-domain difficulty and endows the potentials with inherent generalizability and scalability even with relatively small training dataset. The nonlinearity-enbeding transformation for interaction function expands the expressive capability and make the potentials super-linear. The SUS2-MLIP outperforms the state-of-the-art MLIP models with its exceptional computational efficiency especially for multiple-element materials and physical scalability in property prediction. This work not only presents a highly-efficient universal MLIP model but also sheds light on incorporating physical constraints into artificial-intelligence-aided materials simulation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Stacking up electron-rich and electron-deficient monolayers to achieve extraordinary mid- to far-infrared excitonic absorption: Interlayer excitons in the C3B/C3N bilayer

Our ability to efficiently detect and generate far-infrared (i.e., terahertz) radiation is vital in areas spanning from biomedical imaging to interstellar spectroscopy. Despite decades of intense research, bridging the terahertz gap between electronics and optics remains a major challenge due to the lack of robust materials that can efficiently operate in this frequency range, and two-dimensional (2D) type-II heterostructures may be ideal candidates to fill this gap. Herein, using highly accurate many-body perturbation theory within the GW plus Bethe-Salpeter equation approach, we predict that a type-II heterostructure consisting of an electron rich C3N and an electron deficient C3B monolayers can give rise to extraordinary optical activities in the mid- to far-infrared range. C3N and C3B are two graphene-derived 2D materials that have attracted increasing research attention. Although both C3N and C3B monolayers are moderate gap 2D materials, and they only couple through the rather weak van der Waals interactions, the bilayer heterostructure surprisingly supports extremely bright, low-energy interlayer excitons with large binding energies of 0.2 ~ 0.4 eV, offering an ideal material with interlayer excitonic states for mid-to far-infrared applications at room temperature. We also investigate in detail the properties and formation mechanism of the inter- and intra-layer excitons.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in Monolayer CrI$_3$ on Metal Substrates

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is the primary mechanism for realizing real-space chiral spin textures, which are regarded as key components for the next-generation spintronics. However, DMI arises from a perturbation term of the spin-orbit interaction and is usually weak in pristine magnetic semiconductors. To date, large DMI and the resulting skyrmions are only realized in a few materials under stringent conditions. Using first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that significant DMI occurs between nearest-neighbor Cr atoms in two-dimensional (2D) magnetic semiconductor CrI$_3$ on Au or Cu substrates. This exceptionally strong DMI is generated by the interfacial charge transfer and weak chemical interactions between chromium halides and metal substrates, which break the spatial inversion symmetry. These findings highlight the significance of substrate effects in 2D magnets and expand the inventory of feasible materials with strong DMI.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Prediction of protected band edge states and dielectric tunable quasiparticle and excitonic properties of monolayer MoSi$_2$N$_4$

The electronic structure of two-dimensional (2D) materials are inherently prone to environmental perturbations, which may pose significant challenges to their applications in electronic or optoelectronic devices. A 2D material couples with its environment through two mechanisms: local chemical coupling and nonlocal dielectric screening effects. The local chemical coupling is often difficult to predict or control experimentally. Nonlocal dielectric screening, on the other hand, can be tuned by choosing the substrates or layer thickness in a controllable manner. Therefore, a compelling 2D electronic material should offer band edge states that are robust against local chemical coupling effects. Here it is demonstrated that the recently synthesized MoSi$_2$N$_4$ is an ideal 2D semiconductor with robust band edge states protected from capricious environmental chemical coupling effects. Detailed many-body perturbation theory calculations are carried out to illustrate how the band edge states of MoSi$_2$N$_4$ are shielded from the direct chemical coupling effects, but its quasiparticle and excitonic properties can be modulated through the nonlocal dielectric screening effects. This unique property, together with the moderate band gap and the thermodynamic and mechanical stability of this material, paves the way for a range of applications of MoSi$_2$N$_4$ in areas including energy, 2D electronics, and optoelectronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Combined sub-sampling and analytical integration for efficient large-scale $GW$ calculations for 2D systems

Accurate and efficient predictions of the quasiparticle properties of complex materials remain a major challenge due to the convergence issue and the unfavorable scaling of the computational cost with respect to the system size. Quasiparticle $GW$ calculations for two dimensional (2D) materials are especially difficult. The unusual analytical behaviors of the dielectric screening and the electron self-energy of 2D materials make the conventional Brillouin zone (BZ) integration approach rather inefficient and require an extremely dense $k$-grid to properly converge the calculated quasiparticle energies. In this work, we present a combined non-uniform sub-sampling and analytical integration method that can drastically improve the efficiency of the BZ integration in 2D $GW$ calculations. Our work is distinguished from previous work in that, instead of focusing on the intricate dielectric matrix or the screened Coulomb interaction matrix, we exploit the analytical behavior of various terms of the convolved self-energy $Σ(\mathbf{q})$ in the small $\mathbf{q}$ limit. This method, when combined with another accelerated $GW$ method that we developed recently, can drastically speed-up (by over three orders of magnitude) $GW$ calculations for 2D materials. Our method allows fully converged $GW$ calculations for complex 2D systems at a fraction of computational cost, facilitating future high throughput screening of the quasiparticle properties of 2D semiconductors for various applications. To demonstrate the capability and performance of our new method, we have carried out fully converged $GW$ calculations for monolayer C$_2$N, a recently discovered 2D material with a large unit cell, and investigate its quasiparticle band structure in detail.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Remarkable band gap renormalization via dimensionality of the layered material C3B

Layer-dependent electronic and structural properties of emerging graphitic carbon boron compound C3B are investigated using both density functional theory and the GW approximation. We discover that, in contrast to a moderate quasiparticle band gap of 2.55 eV for monolayer C3B, the calculated quasiparticle band gap of perfectly stacked bulk phase C3B is as small as 0.17 eV. Therefore, our results suggest that layered material C3B exhibits a remarkably large band gap renormalization of over 2.3 eV due to the interlayer coupling and screening effects, providing a single material with an extraordinary band gap tunability. The quasiparticle band gap of monolayer C3B is also over 1.0 eV larger than that of C3N, a closely related two-dimensional semiconductor. Detailed inspections of the near-edge electronic states reveal that the conduction and valence band edges of C3B are formed by out-of-plane and in-plane electronic states, respectively, suggesting an interesting possibility of tuning the band edges of such layered material separately by modulating the in-plane and out-of-plane interactions.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Probing the Electronic States in Black Phosphorus Vertical Heterostructures

Atomically thin black phosphorus (BP) is a promising two-dimensional material for fabricating electronic and optoelectronic nano-devices with high mobility and tunable bandgap structures. However, the charge-carrier mobility in few-layer phosphorene (monolayer BP) is mainly limited by the presence of impurity and disorders. In this study, we demonstrate that vertical BP heterostructure devices offer great advantages in probing the electron states of monolayer and few-layer phosphorene at temperatures down to 2 K through capacitance spectroscopy. Electronic states in the conduction and valence bands of phosphorene are accessible over a wide range of temperature and frequency. Exponential band tails have been determined to be related to disorders. Unusual phenomena such as the large temperature-dependence of the electron state population in few-layer phosphorene have been observed and systematically studied. By combining the first-principles calculation, we identified that the thermal excitation of charge trap states and oxidation-induced defect states were the main reasons for this large temperature dependence of the electron state population and degradation of the on-off ratio in phosphorene field-effect transistors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗