Ultrashort light flashes transform a semiconductor to a metal - in just 0.00000000000002 seconds
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Researchers in Prof. Dr. Julia Stähler’s group found out that a semiconductor surface can be turned into a metal within only 20 fs (= 0.000 000 000 000 02 s) - with laser light. Remarkably, this transient metal is not only excited on ultrafast femtosecond timescales, it also decays rapidly. One reason for this is that the observed transition requires orders of magnitude lower photon fluxes than previous photoinduced phase transitions. The underlying mechanism is consistent with a photoinduced Mott transition of defect excitons at the semiconductor surface. Although the experiments were carried out at ZnO surfaces, the ultrafast surface metallization is a general phenomenon that should also occur in other compound semiconductors.
Research paper (open access): L. Gierster et al., Ultrafast generation and decay of a surface metal, Nat. Commun. 12, 978 (2021)
Press release (English, MPG) // Pressemitteilung (Deutsch, HU Berlin)
Teaser video on YouTube (English/German subtitles):
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