Published by: School of Science Edited by: Qin Yao

WUST News Recently, Assistant Professor Zhu Sicong from the School of Science, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Professor Wu Jian from the National University of Defense Technology and German Humboldt Scholar Wang Jian, reported the use of delocalized electronic engineering to control the electronic structure of β-AsP to achieve directional transformation of electrical properties. The paper was published in the prestigious Advanced Functional Materials journal in the field of materials under the title Electronic Delocalization Engineering of β-AsP Enabled High-Efficient Multi-Source Logic Nanodevices. Zhu Sicong is the corresponding author of the paper, and the WUST is the first unit. And Mataster student Liu Fangqi (enrolled in 2020) and Master student Wang Tongtong (enrolled in 2021) are the co-first authors of the paper.

This work further demonstrates that by manipulating the vacancy concentration, broadband response, triangular-wave circuit system signal and polarization anisotropy recersal can be achieved in the simulation of light source logic devices, with an extinction ratio as high as 1561. When the vacancy concentration is 1.67% and 0.89%, the magnetoresistance of the power and heat source logic devices reaches 1013% and 1039%, respectively, which is significantly better than the existing reports.

The research results reveal a delocalized electron strategy to achieve efficient performance of multi-source logic nanodevices by tuning the electronic structure. Using first-principles calculations coupled with non-equilibrium Green's function methods, we systematically investigate electronic delocalization engineering in β-AsP, a two-dimensional material, to achieve high-performance output with multifunctional capabilities in nanodevices.

The results show that As and P atomic vacancies as equivalent sites can lead to the transformation of the overall electrical properties of β-AsP, and the mechanism of the transformation of semi-metallic and metallic properties under different vacancy concentrations is tentatively discussed. This is due to the electron delocalization and asymmetric electronic states generated by the three neighbouring atoms closest to the vacancy position, which causes the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) to move towards the Fermi level and undergo spin polarization. This work shows that delocalized electrons can meet the future diverse logic nanodevices with creative coding of logic digital information of "0" and "1". (School of Science at WUST)