English

Valley-Selective Landau-Zener Oscillations in Semi-Dirac p-n Junctions

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2017-07-26 v2

Abstract

We study transport across p-n junctions of gapped two-dimensional semi-Dirac materials: nodal semimetals whose energy bands disperse quadratically and linearly along distinct crystal axes. The resulting electronic properties --- relevant to materials such as TiO2_2/VO2_2 multilayers and α\alpha-(BEDT-TTF)2_2I3_3 salts --- continuously interpolate between those of mono- and bi-layer graphene as a function of propagation angle. We demonstrate that tunneling across the junction depends on the orientation of the tunnel barrier relative to the crystalline axes, leading to strongly non-monotonic current-voltage characteristics, including negative differential conductance in some regimes. In multi-valley systems these features provide a natural route to engineering valley-selective transport.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.10356,
  title  = {Valley-Selective Landau-Zener Oscillations in Semi-Dirac p-n Junctions},
  author = {K. Saha and R. Nandkishore and S. A. Parameswaran},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.10356},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages, 7 figures, appendices