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Semimetals for high-performance photodetection

Nature Materials volume 19, pages 830–837 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Semimetals are being explored for their unique advantages in low-energy high-speed photodetection, although they suffer from serious drawbacks such as an intrinsically high dark current. In this Perspective, we envision the exploitation of topological effects in the photoresponse of these materials as a promising route to circumvent these problems. We overview recent studies on photodetection based on graphene and other semimetals, and further discuss the opportunities created by topological effects, along with the additional challenges that they impose on photodetector designs.

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Fig. 1: Photodetection mechanisms.
Fig. 2: Semiconductor-based versus semimetal-based PDs.
Fig. 3: Topological enhancement of the shift current response in Weyl semimetals.
Fig. 4: Opportunities in semimetal-based photodetection.

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Acknowledgements

D.S. acknowledges support from the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (grant no. JQ19001) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grant nos. 91750109, 11674013). D.X. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences grant no. DE-SC0012509. F.X. acknowledges support by a US National Science Foundation CAREER award. F.J.G.A. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO (MAT2017-88492-R, SEV2015-0522) and ERC (advanced grant no. 789104-eNANO). J.L. acknowledges financial support by National Key R&D Program (2018YFA0307200) and the 111 Project (no. B07014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, School of Precision Instruments and Opto-electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Jing Liu

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Fengnian Xia

  3. Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Di Xiao

  4. ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

    F. Javier García de Abajo

  5. ICREA-Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanca̧ts, Barcelona, Spain

    F. Javier García de Abajo

  6. International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Dong Sun

  7. Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China

    Dong Sun

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  1. Jing Liu
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D.S. proposed the paper scheme and coordinated the work. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dong Sun.

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Liu, J., Xia, F., Xiao, D. et al. Semimetals for high-performance photodetection. Nat. Mater. 19, 830–837 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0715-7

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