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Two-dimensional semiconductors host high-temperature exotic state

The phenomenon of Bose–Einstein condensation is typically limited to extremely low temperatures. The effect has now been spotted at much higher temperatures for particles called excitons in atomically thin semiconductors.
  1. Andrey Chaves

    1. Andrey Chaves is in the Department of Physics, Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza 60455-900, Ceará, Brazil.

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  2. David Neilson

    1. David Neilson is in the Department of Physics, University of Antwerp, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium.

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At sufficiently low temperatures, large assemblies of particles that are classified as bosons condense into a single quantum state. This remarkable phenomenon, known as Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC), can allow the particles to become a superfluid, whereby they flow without friction. Superfluidity has been seen in gaseous helium-4 and in ultracold atoms, but only at extremely low temperatures (a few kelvin). In the past few decades, there have been many attempts to achieve high-temperature BEC in semiconductors using electrically neutral composite particles called excitons, which are bound states of a negatively charged electron and a positively charged hole (electron vacancy). Writing in Nature, Wang et al.1 report compelling experimental evidence that charge-separated excitons in a pair of atomically thin semiconductors can exhibit BEC at temperatures as high as 100 K.

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Nature 574, 39-40 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02906-9

References

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  7. Conti, S., Van der Donck, M., Perali, A., Peeters, F. M. & Neilson, D. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1909.03411 (2019).

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