Search

The simple kagome-lattice band structure possesses Dirac cones, flat band, and saddle point with van Hove singularities in the electronic density of states, facilitating the emergence of various electronic orders. Here we report a titanium-based kagome metal CsTi3Bi5 where titanium atoms form a kagome network, resembling its isostructural compound CsV3Sb5. Thermodynamic properties including the magnetization, resistance, and heat capacity reveal the conventional Fermi liquid behavior in the kagome metal CsTi3Bi5 and no signature of superconducting or charge density wave (CDW) transition anomaly down to 85 mK. Systematic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements reveal multiple bands crossing the Fermi level, consistent with the first-principles calculations. The flat band formed by the destructive interference of hopping in the kagome lattice is observed directly. Compared to CsV3Sb5, the van Hove singularities are pushed far away above the Fermi level in CsTi3Bi5, in line with the absence of CDW. Furthermore, the first-principles calculations identify the nontrivial Z2 topological properties for those bands crossing the Fermi level, accompanied by several local band inversions. Our results suppose CsTi3Bi5 as a complementary platform to explore the superconductivity and nontrivial band topology.

The growing demand for electronic devices, smart devices, and the Internet of Things constitutes the primary driving force for marching down the path of decreased critical dimension and increased circuit intricacy of integrated circuits. However, as sub-10 nm high-volume manufacturing is becoming the mainstream, there is greater awareness that defects introduced by original equipment manufacturer components impact yield and manufacturing costs. The identification, positioning, and classification of these defects, including random particles and systematic defects, are becoming more and more challenging at the 10 nm node and beyond. Very recently, the combination of conventional optical defect inspection with emerging techniques such as nanophotonics, optical vortices, computational imaging, quantitative phase imaging, and deep learning is giving the field a new possibility. Hence, it is extremely necessary to make a thorough review for disclosing new perspectives and exciting trends, on the foundation of former great reviews in the field of defect inspection methods. In this article, we give a comprehensive review of the emerging topics in the past decade with a focus on three specific areas: (a) the defect detectability evaluation, (b) the diverse optical inspection systems, and (c) the post-processing algorithms. We hope, this work can be of importance to both new entrants in the field and people who are seeking to use it in interdisciplinary work.

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to predict the modulation of band gap by twisting bilayer MoS2 sheets with different rotation angles. The electronic band structure results show that the rotations can make bilayer MoS2 sheets change from semiconducting to metallic. The band gap decreases from 1.24eV to 0.06eV. These results would open up possibilities for its applications in nanoelectronic devices simply by tuning band gaps of MoS2 with rotation angles.

Density-functional theory (DFT) in combination with the nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism is performed to study the electronic and transport properties of armchair graphene nanoribbons with defects. The results show that the electronic and transport properties vary with different type of defects. The binding energy indicate that single-defect AGNRs are the most stable structure and line-defect AGNRs are the most unstable structure. The transmission spectra show that the defective AGNRs become disorder and the value decreases. The energy gap at the Fermi level become wider. These results would guide the experiments in real applications.

An ideal n = 3 member of the group of Ruddlesden?Popper (RP) phases Ca4Mn3O10 was obtained by solid-state reaction under high pressure. This phase has been studied by transmission electron microscopy, convergent beam electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and parallel electron energy-loss spectroscopy. The lattice parameters are derived as a = b = 0.37 nm and c = 2.69 nm with the space group I4/mmm, which is the space group of the ideal RP phase.

Recently, we have indirectly demonstrated that nanostructure reconstruction accuracy is degraded by the outliers in optical scatterometry, and we have applied the robust estimation method to suppress these outliers. However, the existence of a possible heavy masking effect could result in the risk of low measurement accuracy, since the detection of outliers is simply based on the judgment of residual value. In this work, a novel method is introduced to directly detect outliers, which can provide the intuitional display of outliers in a two-dimensional coordinate system. Moreover, a robust correction step based on the principle of least trimmed squared estimator regression is proposed to replace the conventional Gauss–Newton iteration step, by which the more reliable and accurate nanostructure reconstruction is achieved. The improved reconstruction of a one-dimensional etched Si grating has demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed methods.