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We report a comprehensive study on a layered-structure compound of NaZn4As3, which has been predicted to be an ideal topological semimetal (TSM) candidate. It is found that NaZn4As3 undergoes a structural transformation from high temperature rhombohedral to a low temperature monoclinic phase. The electric resistivity exhibits a metal-to-insulator-like transition at around 100 K, and then develops a plateau at low temperature, which might be related to the protected topologically conducting surface states. Our first-principles calculation confirms further that NaZn4As3 is a topological insulator (TI) for both different phases rather than a previously proposed TSM. The Hall resistivity reveals that the hole carriers dominate the transport properties for the whole temperature range investigated. Furthermore, an obvious kink possibly associated to the structure transition has been detected in thermopower around ~ 170 K. The large thermopower and moderate κ indicate that NaZn4As3 and /or its derivatives can provide a good platform for optimizing and studying the thermoelectric performance.

Based on the charge balance principle, an optimal impurity distribution variation of lateral doping termination (OID-VLD) and its ion-injection mask design method are proposed and verified. The comparative simulations and experiments show that OID-VLD can achieve better blocking ability and reliability than the traditional VLD (T-VLD). Vertical double diffusion MOSFET (VDMOS) with OID-VLD achieved breakdown voltage (BV) of 1684 V and passed the 168 hours 100 °C–110 °C–120 °C–125 °C high-temperature reverse bias (HTRB) test, while VDMOS with T-VLD obtained BV of 1636 V and failed in the 20 hours 120 °C HTRB test.

We propose a novel high performance carrier stored trench bipolar transistor (CSTBT) with dual shielding structure (DSS-CSTBT). The proposed DSS-CSTBT features a double trench structure with different trench profiles in the surface, in which a shallow gate trench is shielded by a deep emitter trench and a thick oxide layer under it. Compared with the conventional CSTBT (con-CSTBT), the proposed DSS-CSTBT not only alleviates the negative impact of the shallow gate trench and highly doped CS layer on the breakdown voltage (BV), but also well reduces the gate-collector capacitance C GC, gate charge Q G, and turn-off loss E OFF of the device. Furthermore, lower turn-on loss E ON and gate drive loss E DR are also obtained. Simulation results show that with the same CS layer doping concentration N CS = 1.5 × 1016 cm−3, the BV increases from 1312 V of the con-CSTBT to 1423 V of the proposed DSS-CSTBT with oxide layer thickness under gate (T og2) of 1 μm. Moreover, compared with the con-CSTBT, the C GC at V CE of 25 V and miller plateau charge (Q GC) for the proposed DSS-CSTBT with T og2 of 1 μm are reduced by 79.4% and 74.3%, respectively. With the V GE increases from 0 V to 15 V, the total Q G for the proposed DSS-CSTBT with T og2 of 1 μm is reduced by 49.5%. As a result, at the same on-state voltage drop (V CEON) of 1.55 V, the E ON and E OFF are reduced from 20.3 mJ/cm2 and 19.3 mJ/cm2 for the con-CSTBT to 8.2 mJ/cm2 and 9.7 mJ/cm2 for the proposed DSS-CSTBT with T og2 of 1 μm, respectively. The proposed DSS-CSTBT not only significantly improves the trade-off relationship between the V CEON and E OFF but also greatly reduces the E ON.

The original variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) typically minimizes energy with hybrid quantum-classical optimization that aims to find the ground state. Here, we propose a VQE based on minimizing energy variance and call it the variance-VQE, which treats the ground state and excited states on the same footing, since an arbitrary eigenstate for a Hamiltonian should have zero energy variance. We demonstrate the properties of the variance-VQE for solving a set of excited states in quantum chemistry problems. Remarkably, we show that optimization of a combination of energy and variance may be more efficient to find low-energy excited states than those of minimizing energy or variance alone. We further reveal that the optimization can be boosted with stochastic gradient descent by Hamiltonian sampling, which uses only a few terms of the Hamiltonian and thus significantly reduces the quantum resource for evaluating variance and its gradients.

An n-GaO x thin film is deposited on a single-crystal boron-doped diamond by RF magnetron sputtering to form the pn heterojunction. The n-GaO x thin film presents a small surface roughness and a large optical band gap of 4.85 eV. In addition, the band alignment is measured using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to evaluate the heterojunction properties. The GaO x /diamond heterojunction shows a type-II staggered band configuration, where the valence and conduction band offsets are 1.28 eV and 1.93 eV, respectively. These results confirm the feasibility of the use of n-GaO x as a termination structure for diamond power devices.

Space radiation with inherently broadband spectral flux poses a huge danger to astronauts and electronics on aircraft, but it is hard to simulate such feature with conventional radiation sources. Using a tabletop laser-plasma accelerator, we can reproduce exponential energy particle beams as similar as possible to these in space radiation. We used such an electron beam to study the electron radiation effects on the surface structure and performance of two-dimensional material (FePS3). Energetic electron beam led to bulk sample cleavage and damage between areas of uneven thickness. For the FePS3 sheet sample, electron radiation transformed it from crystalline state to amorphous state, causing the sample surface to rough. The full widths at the half maximum of characteristic Raman peaks became larger, and the intensities of characteristic Raman peaks became weak or even disappeared dramatically under electron radiation. This trend became more obvious for thinner samples, and this phenomenon was attributed to the cleavage of P–P and P–S bonds, destabilizing the bipyramid structure of [P2S6]4– unit. The results are of great significance for testing the maximum allowable radiation dose for the two-dimensional material, implying that FePS3 cannot withstand such energetic electron radiation without an essential shield.

We utilize three parallel reservoir computers using semiconductor lasers with optical feedback and light injection to model radar probe signals with delays. Three radar probe signals are generated by driving lasers constructed by a three-element laser array with self-feedback. The response lasers are implemented also by a three-element lase array with both delay-time feedback and optical injection, which are utilized as nonlinear nodes to realize the reservoirs. We show that each delayed radar probe signal can be predicted well and to synchronize with its corresponding trained reservoir, even when parameter mismatches exist between the response laser array and the driving laser array. Based on this, the three synchronous probe signals are utilized for ranging to three targets, respectively, using Hilbert transform. It is demonstrated that the relative errors for ranging can be very small and less than 0.6%. Our findings show that optical reservoir computing provides an effective way for applications of target ranging.

We report the transport properties of a topological insulator candidate, LiMgBi. The electric resistivity of the title compound exhibits a metal-to-semiconductor-like transition at around 160 K and tends to saturation below 50 K. At low temperatures, the magnetoresistance is up to ∼260 % at 9 T and a clear weak antilocalization effect is observed in the low magnetic-field region. The Hall measurement reveals that LiMgBi is a multiband system, where hole-type carriers (n h ∼ 1018 cm−3) play a major role in the transport process. Remarkably, LiMgBi possess a large Seebeck coefficient ∼440 μV/K) and a moderate thermal conductivity at room temperature, which indicate that LiMgBi is a promising candidate in thermoelectric applications.

A new scheme is proposed to improve the electron beam quality of ionization-induced injection by tailoring gas profile in laser wakefield acceleration. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations show that the ionization-induced injection mainly occurs in high-density stage and automatically truncates in low-density stage due to the decrease of wakefield potential difference. The beam loading can be compensated by the elongated beam resulting from the density transition stage. The beam quality can be improved by shorter injection distance and beam loading effect. A quasi-monoenergetic electron beam with a central energy of 258 MeV and an energy spread of 5.1% is obtained under certain laser-plasma conditions.