Wenkai Zheng

Area of research

Materials Chemistry · Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Research interest

Research topics from publications: Engineering the Structural and Electronic Phases of MoTe2 through W Substitution; Bilayer Lateral Heterostructures of Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides and Their Optoelectronic Response; Giant and Reversible Barocaloric Effect in Trinuclear Spin‐Crossover Complex Fe3(bntrz)6(tcnset)6; Detailed study of the Fermi surfaces of the type-II Dirac semimetallic candidates XTe2 (X=Pd, Pt); Bulk Fermi surface of the Weyl type-II semimetallic candidate NbIrTe4; Bulk Fermi surfaces of the Dirac type-II semimetallic candidate NiTe2; Magnetic field-induced non-trivial electronic topology in Fe3−xGeTe2; Possible manifestations of the chiral anomaly and evidence for a magnetic field induced topological phase transition in the type-I Weyl semimetal TaAs; Thickness- and Twist-Angle-Dependent Interlayer Excitons in Metal Monochalcogenide Heterostructures; Superconductivity enhancement in phase-engineered molybdenum carbide/disulfide vertical heterostructures. Representative work: MoTe2 is an exfoliable transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) that crystallizes in three symmetries: the semiconducting trigonal-prismatic 2H- or α-phase, the semimetallic and monoclinic 1T′- or β-phase, and the semimetallic orthorhombic γ-structure. The 2H-phase displays a band gap of ∼1 eV making it appealing for flexible and transparent optoelectronics. The γ-phase is predicted to possess unique topological properties that might lead to topologically protected nondissipative transport channels. Recently, it was argued that it is possible to locally induce phase-transformations in TMDs, through chemical doping, local heating, or electric-field to achieve ohmic contacts or to induce useful f Two-dimensional lateral heterojunctions based on monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have received increasing attention given that their direct band gap makes them very attractive for optoelectronic applications. Although bilayer TMDs present an indirect band gap, their electrical properties are expected to be less susceptible to ambient conditions, with higher mobilities and density of states when compared to monolayers. Bilayers and few-layers single domain devices have already demonstrated higher performance in radio frequency and photosensing applications. Despite these advantages, lateral heterostructures based on bilayer domains have been less explored. Here,