We investigate the transport and single particle relaxation times of silicene in the presence of neutral and charged impurities. The static charge conductivity is studied using the semiclassical Boltzmann formalism when the spin-orbit interaction is taken into account. The screening is modeled within Thomas-Fermi and random phase approximations. We show that the transport relaxation time is always longer than the single particle one. Easy electrical controllability of both carrier density and band gap in this buckled two-dimensional structure makes it a suitable candidate for several electronic and optoelectronic applications. In particular, we observe that the dc charge conductivity could be easily controlled through an external electric field, a very promising feature for applications as electrical switches and transistors. Our findings would be qualitatively valid for other buckled honeycomb lattices of the same family, such as germanine and stanine.
We calculate the thermal conductivity of free-standing silicene using the phonon Boltzmann transport equation within the relaxation time approximation. In this calculation, we investigate the effects of sample size and different scattering mechanisms such as phonon-phonon, phonon-boundary, phonon-isotope and phonon-vacancy defect. Moreover, the role of different phonon modes is examined. We show that, in contrast to graphene, the dominant contribution to the thermal conductivity of silicene originates from the in-plane acoustic branches, which is about 70\% at room temperature and this contrib…
We study the lattice thermal conductivity of two-dimensional (2D) pentagonal systems, such as penta-silicene and penta-germanene. Penta-silicene has been recently reported, while the stable penta-germanene, belonging to the same group IV element, is revealed firstly by our ab initio calculations. We find that both penta-silicene and penta-germanene at room temperature have ultralow lattice thermal conductivities $κ$ of 1.29 W/mK and 0.30 W/mK respectively. To the best of our knowledge, penta-germanene may have the lowest $κ$ in 2D crystal materials. We attribute ultralow $κ$ to the weak phonon…
Thermal transport behavior in silicene nanotubes has become more important due to the application of these promising nanostructures in the engineering of next-generation nanoelectronic devices. We apply non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations to study the thermal conductivity of silicene nanotubes with different lengths and diameters. We further explore the effects of grain boundary, strain, vacancy defect, and temperature in the range of 300-700 K on the thermal conductivity. Our results indicate that the thermal conductivity varies with the length approximately in the range of …
Graphene, Silicene, $\mathrm{MoS}_2$ and other similar two-dimensional structures have unusual electronic properties that lend themselves to exotic device applications. These properties emanate from the fact that the electrons are endowed with Dirac fermion-like attributes. Thus these materials are not only characterized by certain fundamental principles, they also have amazing practical uses. Our emphasis here is on one such basic property concerning nonlinear response to time-dependent electric fields. We set up a first principle quantum master equation for the underlying density operator wh…
During the fabrication process of large scale silicene through common chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique, polycrystalline films are quite likely to be produced, and the existence of Kapitza thermal resistance along grain boundaries could result in substantial changes of their thermal properties. In the present study, the thermal transport along polycrystalline silicene was evaluated by performing a multiscale method. Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations (NEMD) was carried out to assess the interfacial thermal resistance of various constructed grain boundaries in silicene as we…
We investigate the electron properties of the monolayer and bilayer silicene which is the honeycomb lattice consist of silicon atoms, including the optical conductivity and charged impurity scattering, due to the quasipatricle Dirac-like behaviors near the K-point of silicene. The spin, valley, sublattice degrees of freedom are taken into consider in the multi-band tight-binding model. In momentum space, the scattering matrix which connects the two bare (without interaction) Green's functions in the quasiparticle momentum transport process, could be momentum-independent for the single impuirit…
Silicon is one of the most frequently used chemical elements of the periodic table in nanotechnology. Two-dimensional (2D) silicene, a silicon analog of graphene, has been readily obtained to make field-effect transistors since 2015. Recently, as new members of the silicene family, penta-silicene and its nanoribbon have been experimentally grown on Ag(110) surface with exotic electronic properties. However, the thermoelectric performance of penta-silicene has not been so far studied that would hinder its potential applications of electric generation from waste heat and solid-state Peltier cool…
We investigate the anomalous effects due to the Berry correction and the considerable perturbations in the silicene-like hexagonal lattice system. The Berry curvature in periodic Bloch band system which related to the electromagnetic field is explored, the induced transverse anomalous velocity gives rise to the intrinsic Hall conductivity (without the vertex correction) expecially in the quantum anomalous Hall phase. The quantum anomalous Hall effect which related to the anomalous velocity term is detected, including the band avoided corssing effect and the generated special band gap. %{Enlarg…
We present a theoretical study of the effects of heterostrain and lattice relaxation on the optical conductivity of twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle, based on the band structures obtained from a continuum model. We find that heterostrain, lattice relaxation and their combination give rise to very distinctive spectroscopic features in the optical conductivity, which can be used to probe and distinguish these effects. From the spectrum at various Fermi energies, important features in the strain- and relaxation-modified band structure such as the bandgap, bandwidth and van Hove singu…
We calculate the transport relaxation time $τ_{\rm tr}$ and spin transport relaxation time $τ_{s,{\rm tr}}$ for a two-dimensional electron gas with spatially fluctuating Rashba spin-orbit interaction. These relaxation times determine the electrical and spin conductivity of the two-dimensional system, respectively. It is shown that the transport relaxation time $τ_{\rm tr}$ is a nonmonotonic function of electron energy $\varepsilon $, whereas the spin transport relaxation time $τ_{s,{\rm tr}}$ decreases with increasing $\varepsilon $, similarly to the conventional electron relaxation time $τ$ t…
We investigate the Josephson effcet in superconductor-normal-superconductor junction (SNS) base on the doped unbiased silicene under the perpendicular electric field and off-resonance circularly polarized light. The Andreev reflection (including the retroreflection and specular one) during the subgap transport, the free energy, and the reversal of the Josephson effect as well as the emergence of $ϕ_{0}$-junction are exploited. The Andreev reflection is complete in the NS interface even for the clean interface and without the Fermi wave vector mismatch, which is opposite to the case of ferromag…
For an isotropic single-band system, it is well known that the semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory within the relaxation time approximation and the Kubo formula with the vertex corrections provide the same result with the $(1-\cosθ)$ factor in the inverse transport relaxation time. In anisotropic multiband systems, the semiclassical Boltzmann transport equation is generalized to coupled integral equations relating transport relaxation times at different angles in different bands. Using the Kubo formula, we study the vertex corrections to the dc conductivity in anisotropic multiband system…
Problem of nonlinear conductivity within relaxation time approximation in noncentrosymmetric insulators
Department of Physical Science, Ritsumeikan University（立命馆大学物理科学系）；Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学应用物理系）；Department of Liberal Arts and Basic Sciences, College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University（日本大学工业技术学院文理基础科学系）
We theoretically study the band structure and optical conductivity of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) near the magic angle considering the effects of lattice relaxation. We show that the optical conductivity spectrum is characterized by a series of peaks associated with the van Hove singularities in the band structure, and the peak energies evolve systematically with the twist angle. Lattice relaxation effects in TBG modify its band structure, especially the flat bands, which lead to significant shifts of the peaks in optical conductivity. These results demonstrate that spectroscopic features i…
We study heat transport in a gas of one-dimensional fermions in the presence of a small temperature gradient. At temperatures well below the Fermi energy there are two types of relaxation processes in this system, with dramatically different relaxation rates. As a result, in addition to the usual thermal conductivity, one can introduce the thermal conductivity of the gas of elementary excitations, which quantifies the dissipation in the system in the broad range of frequencies between the two relaxation rates. We develop a microscopic theory of these transport coefficients in the limit of weak…
We discuss the dynamical polarization, plasmon dispersion, relaxation time, and the Friedel oscillation of screened potential of the two-dimension Dirac and three-dimension Weyl system (which are gapped) in the low-energy tigh-binding model. The results, like the Fermi wavevector, Thomas-Fermi wavevector, and longitudinal conductivity are obtained in different dimensions. Some important conclusions are detailedly discussed in this paper, including the screening character under short or long range Coulomb interaction, and the longitudinal conductivity in two- or three-dimensions. The longitudin…
One of the fundamental properties of semiconductors is their ability to support highly tunable electric currents in the presence of electric fields or carrier concentration gradients. These properties are described by transport coefficients such as electron and hole mobilities. Recently, advances in electronic structure methods for real materials have made it possible to study these properties with predictive accuracy and without resorting to empirical parameters. Here, we review the most recent developments in the area of ab initio calculations of carrier mobilities of semiconductors. In the …
We derive a chiral kinetic theory with Landau level basis, which is valid for slow-varying magnetic field with arbitrary magnitude. We apply the new chiral kinetic theory to calculate the electric conductivity transverse to the magnetic field in a magnetized QED and QCD plasma. Under the lowest Landau level approximation and relaxation time approximation, we find the transverse conductivity approaches a constant in the large magnetic field limit and is inversely proportional to the relaxation time. We also obtain a frequency-dependent transverse conductivity in response to a time-dependent ele…
