Scientific Highlights 2018

Scientific Highlights

2018
Electronic structure of overdoped La1.77Sr0.23CuO4. (left) dx2-y2 and dz2 band structure along the nodal direction. (middle) Light polarization analysis of the dx2-y2 and dz2 bands. (right) Anti-nodal Fermi surface warping along the kz direction.

Cuprate Trilogy

In a trio of recent papers, a research group from the University of Zürich has made a number of new discoveries about the nature of cuprates' electronic structure and orbital composition. The results have important implications for superconductivity and pseudogaps in cuprates, and even the existence of type-II Dirac fermions in oxides.

Evidence of a Coulomb-Interaction-Induced Lifshitz Transition and Robust Hybrid Weyl Semimetal in Td-MoTe2

25 September 2018

Using soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy we probed the bulk electronic structure of Td-MoTe2. We found that on-site Coulomb interaction leads to a Lifshitz transition, which is essential for a precise description of the electronic structure. A hybrid Weyl semimetal state with a pair of energy bands touching at both type-I and type-II Weyl nodes is indicated by comparing the experimental data with theoretical calculations. Unveiling the importance of Coulomb interaction opens up a new route to comprehend the unique properties of MoTe2, and is significant for understanding the interplay between correlation effects, strong spin-orbit coupling and superconductivity in this van der Waals material.

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•Future Technologies
•7 min

On the path to new high-performance transistors

Materials research
SLS

The electronics industry expects a novel high-performance transistor made of gallium nitride to offer considerable advantages over present-day high-frequency transistors. Yet many fundamental properties of the material remain unknown. Now, for the first time, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have observed electrons while they were flowing in this promising transistor. For that they used one of the world's best sources of soft X-rays at PSI's Swiss Light Source SLS.