Normal-to-topological insulator martensitic phase transition in group-IV monochalcogenides driven by light
Name
s41427-019-0188-9.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.39 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
111d48ad54b033b5aeca744073223b53
Author(s)
Zhou, Jian
Zhang, Shunhong
Li, Ju
Date Issued
January 2020
Journal
NPG Asia Materials
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Zhou, Jian, Zhang, Shunhong and Li, Ju. 2020. "Normal-to-topological insulator martensitic phase transition in group-IV monochalcogenides driven by light." NPG Asia Materials, 12.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020, The Author(s). A material potentially exhibiting multiple crystalline phases with distinct optoelectronic properties can serve as a phase-change memory material. The sensitivity and kinetics can be enhanced when the two competing phases have large electronic structure contrast and the phase change process is diffusionless and martensitic. In this work, we theoretically and computationally illustrate that such a phase transition could occur in the group-IV monochalcogenide SnSe compound, which can exist in the quantum topologically trivial Pnma-SnSe and nontrivial Fm3 ¯ m-SnSe phases. Furthermore, owing to the electronic band structure differences of these phases, a large contrast in the optical responses in the THz region is revealed. According to the thermodynamic theory for a driven dielectric medium, optomechanical control to trigger a topological phase transition using a linearly polarized laser with selected frequency, power and pulse duration is proposed. We further estimate the critical optical electric field to drive a barrierless transition that can occur on the picosecond timescale. This light actuation strategy does not require fabrication of mechanical contacts or electrical leads and only requires transparency. We predict that an optically driven phase transition accompanied by a large entropy difference can be used in an “optocaloric” cooling device.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41427-019-0188-9
