Phonon-Mediated Quasiparticle Lifetime Renormalizations in Few-Layer Hexagonal Boron Nitride.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37561835.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02086 and PMC identifier 10450811.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Understanding the collective behavior of the quasiparticles in solid-state systems underpins the field of nonvolatile electronics, including the opportunity to control many-body effects for well-desired physical phenomena and their applications. Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a wide-energy-bandgap semiconductor, showing immense potential as a platform for low-dimensional device heterostructures. It is an inert dielectric used for gated devices, having a negligible orbital hybridization when placed in contact with other systems. Despite its inertness, we discover a large electron mass enhancement in few-layer hBN affecting the lifetime of the π-band states. We show that the renormalization is phonon-mediated and consistent with both single- and multiple-phonon scattering events. Our findings thus unveil a so-far unknown many-body state in a wide-bandgap insulator, having important implications for devices using hBN as one of their building blocks.