Semiconductors articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    A part-light, part-matter exciton-polariton topological insulator is created in an array of semiconductor microcavities.

    • S. Klembt
    • , T. H. Harder
    •  & S. Höfling

  • Letter |

    For appropriately aligned layers of different two-dimensional materials, the separation between layers—and hence the interlayer coupling—is very sensitive to pressure, leading to pressure-induced changes in the electronic properties of the heterostructures.

    • Matthew Yankowitz
    • , Jeil Jung
    •  & Cory R. Dean

  • Letter |

    In a step towards topological quantum computation, a quantized Majorana conductance has been demonstrated for a semiconducting nanowire coupled to a superconductor.

    • Hao Zhang
    • , Chun-Xiao Liu
    •  & Leo P. Kouwenhoven

  • Letter |

    A two-qubit quantum processor in a silicon device is demonstrated, which can perform the Deutsch–Josza algorithm and the Grover search algorithm.

    • T. F. Watson
    • , S. G. J. Philips
    •  & L. M. K. Vandersypen

  • Letter |

    A device consisting of a metallic island connected to electrodes via tunable semiconductor-based conduction channels is used to explore the evolution of charge quantization in the presence of quantum fluctuations; the measurements reveal a robust scaling of charge quantization as the square root of the residual electron reflection probability across a quantum channel, consistent with theoretical predictions.

    • S. Jezouin
    • , Z. Iftikhar
    •  & F. Pierre

  • Letter |

    A quasiparticle collider is developed that uses femtosecond optical pulses to create electron–hole pairs in the layered dichalcogenide tungsten diselenide, and a strong terahertz field to accelerate and collide the electrons with the holes.

    • F. Langer
    • , M. Hohenleutner
    •  & R. Huber

  • Letter |

    The splitting of zero-energy Majorana modes in a tunnel-coupled InAs nanowire with epitaxial aluminium is exponentially suppressed as the wire length is increased, resulting in protection of these modes; this result helps to establish the robust presence of Majorana modes and quantifies exponential protection in nanowire devices.

    • S. M. Albrecht
    • , A. P. Higginbotham
    •  & C. M. Marcus

  • Letter |

    Zero-temperature quantum phase transitions and their associated quantum critical points are believed to underpin the exotic finite-temperature behaviours of many strongly correlated electronic systems, but identifying the microscopic origins of these transitions can be challenging and controversial; Iftikhar et al. (see also the related paper by Keller et al.) show how such behaviours can be engineered into nanoelectronic quantum dots, which permit both precise experimental control of the quantum critical behaviour and its exact theoretical characterization.

    • Z. Iftikhar
    • , S. Jezouin
    •  & F. Pierre

  • Letter |

    High-harmonic generation in zinc oxide illuminated by an intense, pulsed, mid-infrared laser is found to involve a recollision effect in which electrons recollide with holes causing harmonics to be emitted, a process similar to that which occurs in atomic systems.

    • G. Vampa
    • , T. J. Hammond
    •  & P. B. Corkum

  • Letter |

    Rydberg excitons (condensed-matter analogues of hydrogen atoms) are shown to exist in single-crystal copper oxide with principal quantum numbers as large as n = 25 and giant wavefunctions with extensions of around two micrometres; this has implications for research in condensed-matter optics.

    • T. Kazimierczuk
    • , D. Fröhlich
    •  & M. Bayer

  • Letter |

    A series of long-lived excitons in a monolayer of tungsten disulphide are found to have strong binding energy and an energy dependence on orbital momentum that significantly deviates from conventional, three-dimensional, behaviour.

    • Ziliang Ye
    • , Ting Cao
    •  & Xiang Zhang

  • Letter |

    Fast optical pulses create a plasma of electrons and holes in a semiconductor in which excitons (pairs of holes and electrons) and combinations of two excitons emerge; now a stable liquid-like droplet of electrons and holes has been detected and called a ‘dropleton’.

    • A. E. Almand-Hunter
    • , H. Li
    •  & S. W. Koch

  • Letter |

    The ‘0.7-anomaly’ — an unexpected feature in the conductance of a quantum point contact — is shown to originate in a smeared van Hove singularity in the local density of states at the bottom of the lowest one-dimensional subband of the point contact.

    • Florian Bauer
    • , Jan Heyder
    •  & Stefan Ludwig

  • Letter |

    An electrically pumped polariton laser is constructed using a quantum well microcavity, and its polaritonic nature is demonstrated unambiguously by using a magnetic field to probe the part-light, part-matter character of the system.

    • Christian Schneider
    • , Arash Rahimi-Iman
    •  & Sven Höfling

  • News & Views |

    By tailoring the architecture of a bulk material at several different length scales, the ability of a semiconductor to convert heat into voltage has been optimized to a groundbreaking level of performance. See Letter p.414

    • Tom Nilges

  • News & Views |

    Silicon devices form the backbone of modern computers. It turns out that they might also be a natural hardware platform for a new era of computing technology that uses the principles of quantum physics. See Letter p.541

    • Lee C. Bassett
    •  & David D. Awschalom

  • Letter |

    A giant spin Seebeck effect—three orders of magnitude greater than previously detected—has been observed in a non-magnetic material, InSb; the proposed mechanism relies only on phonon drag and spin–orbit interactions in a spin-polarized system, not on magnetic exchange.

    • C. M. Jaworski
    • , R. C. Myers
    •  & J. P. Heremans

  • News & Views |

    An inorganic semiconductor can take the place of the liquid electrolyte typically used in dye-sensitized solar cells. This achievement points the way to making these devices more easily manufactured and more stable. See Letter p.486

    • Thomas E. Mallouk

  • Letter |

    A solution-processable inorganic semiconductor is reported that can replace the liquid electrolyte of dye-sensitized solar cells, yielding all-solid-state solar cells with impressive energy conversion efficiencies.

    • In Chung
    • , Byunghong Lee
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • News & Views |

    Intense laser fields can rip electrons from an atom and slam them back into it. By using intense terahertz radiation, this idea can be extended to electrons paired with 'holes' in a semiconductor. See Letter p.580

    • Rupert Huber

  • News & Views |

    An approach that entails printing compound-semiconductor ribbons on a silicon substrate offers the means to build nanoscale transistors that can be switched on and off much more effectively than their bulk analogues. See Letter page 286

    • John A. Rogers

  • Letter |

    A potential route to enhancing the performance of electronic devices is to integrate compound semiconductors, which have superior electronic properties, within silicon, which is cheap to process. These authors present a promising new concept to integrate ultrathin layers of single-crystal indium arsenide on silicon-based substrates with an epitaxial transfer method borrowed from large-area optoelectronics. With this technique, the authors fabricate thin-film transistors with excellent device performance.

    • Hyunhyub Ko
    • , Kuniharu Takei
    •  & Ali Javey

  • Letter |

    Isolated magnetic atoms doped into a semiconductor represent an interesting system for spintronics applications and a possible means of constructing quantum bits. So far, however, it has not been possible to study the correlation between the local atomic structure and the dopant's magnetic properties. Here, sensitive scanning probe techniques have been developed that allow the spin excitations of individual magnetic dopants within a two-dimensional semiconductor system to be measured.

    • Alexander A. Khajetoorians
    • , Bruno Chilian
    •  & Roland Wiesendanger

  • Letter |

    The exciton state in semiconductors, where an electron and hole are paired, has been studied extensively, but the properties of exciton states involving three or more charged particles are largely unknown. These authors use a challenging spectroscopy technique to generate and characterize biexcitons, triexcitons and other, unbound, correlations in a gallium arsenide nanostructure. It was previously unknown whether triexcitons, which involve correlations between six particles, can exist at all.

    • Daniel B. Turner
    •  & Keith A. Nelson

  • Letter |

    Topological surface states are a class of electronic states that might be of interest in quantum computing or spintronic applications. They are predicted to be robust against imperfections, but so far there has been no evidence that these states do transmit through naturally occurring surface defects. Here, scanning tunnelling microscopy has been used to show that topological surface states of antimony can be transmitted through naturally occurring barriers that block non-topological surface states of common metals.

    • Jungpil Seo
    • , Pedram Roushan
    •  & Ali Yazdani

  • Letter |

    When an atom is excited into a Rydberg state, its electronic wavefunction can extend to several nanometres. This process can be used to induce and coherently control interactions between atoms that are far enough apart to be non-interacting in their normal states. Now, such behaviour has been realized in a solid-state context, by demonstrating coherent control of the wavefunctions of phosphorus dopant atoms in silicon.

    • P. T. Greenland
    • , S. A. Lynch
    •  & G. Aeppli

  • Letter |

    Although compound semiconductors like gallium arsenide (GaAs) offer advantages over silicon for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications, these do not outweigh the costly process of growing large layers of these materials and transferring them to appropriate substrates. However, a new fabrication approach is now demonstrated: films of GaAs and AlGaAs are grown in thick, multilayered assemblies in a single sequence; the individual layers are then released and distributed over foreign substrates by printing.

    • Jongseung Yoon
    • , Sungjin Jo
    •  & John A. Rogers

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