Related papers: Photoinduced suppression of the ferroelectric inst…
The major obstacle in the design of materials with low lattice thermal conductivity is the difficulty in efficiently scattering phonons across the entire frequency spectrum. Using first principles calculations, we show that driving PbTe…
We report first principles calculations of the phonon dispersions of PbTe both for its observed structure and under compression. At the experimental lattice parameter we find a near instability of the optic branch at the zone center, in…
Understanding the microscopic processes affecting the bulk thermal conductivity is crucial to develop more efficient thermoelectric materials. PbTe is currently one of the leading thermoelectric materials, largely thanks to its low thermal…
We use an x-ray free-electron laser to study the ultrafast lattice dynamics following above band-gap photoexcitation of the incipient ferroelectric potassium-tantalate, \kto. % We use ultrafast near-UV (central wavelength 266\,nm and 50 fs…
IV-VI materials are some of the most efficient bulk thermoelectric materials due to their proximity to soft-mode phase transitions, which leads to low lattice thermal conductivity. It has been shown that the lattice thermal conductivity of…
Local symmetry breaking in complex materials is emerging as an important contributor to materials properties but is inherently difficult to study. Here we follow up an earlier structural observation of such a local symmetry broken phase in…
Revived attention in black phosphorus (bP) has been tremendous in the past decade. While many photoinitiated experiments have been conducted, a cross-examination of bP's photocarrier and structural dynamics is still lacking. In this report,…
The anharmonic lattice dynamics of rock-salt thermoelectric compounds SnTe and PbTe are investigated with inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and first-principles calculations. The experiments show that, surprisingly, although SnTe is closer…
We present a constrained density functional perturbation theory scheme for the calculation of structural and harmonic vibrational properties of insulators in the presence of an excited and thermalized electron-hole plasma. The method is…
Photo-induced phase transitions have been intensively studied owing to the ability to control a material of interest in the ultrafast manner, which can induce exotic phases unable to be attained at equilibrium. However, the key mechanisms…
PbTe crystals have a soft transverse optical phonon mode in the terahertz frequency range, which is known to efficiently decay into heat-carrying acoustic phonons, resulting in anomalously low thermal conductivity. Here, we studied this…
Intervalley collisions, which scatter electrons from one valley or band to another, can be detrimental to thermoelectric performance in materials with multiple valleys/bands. In this study, density functional theory is used to investigate…
Radio-frequency compressed ultrafast electron diffraction has been used to probe the coherent and incoherent coupling of impulsive electronic excitation at 1.55 eV (800 nm) to optical and acoustic phonon modes directly from the perspective…
PbTaSe2 is a non-centrosymmetric topological semimetal. In this work we have explored the structural, elastic, mechanical, bonding, electronic, acoustic, thermal, and optical properties of PbTaSe2. The electronic bond structure calculations…
There is growing interest in using ultrafast light pulses to drive functional materials into nonequilibrium states with novel properties. The conventional wisdom is that above gap photoexcitation behaves similarly to raising the electronic…
Understanding the interplay between various design strategies (for instance, bonding heterogeneity and lone pair induced anharmonicity) to achieve ultralow lattice thermal conductivity ($\kappa_l$) is indispensable for discovering novel…
Ultrafast light pulses can modify the electronic properties of quantum materials by perturbing the underlying, intertwined degrees of freedom. In particular, iron-based superconductors exhibit a strong coupling among electronic nematic…
At room temperature, PbTe and SnTe are efficient thermoelectrics with a cubic structure. At low temperature, SnTe undergoes a ferroelectric transition with a critical temperature strongly dependent on the hole concentration, while PbTe is…
The electronic and structural properties of a material are strongly determined by its symmetry. Changing the symmetry via a photoinduced phase transition offers new ways to manipulate material properties on ultrafast timescales. However, in…
Photodetection is an indispensable function of optoelectronic devices in modern communication and sensing systems. Contrary to the near-infrared/visible regions, the fast and sensitive photodetectors operated at room temperature for the…