Out of plane screening and dipolar interactions in heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper investigates how out-of-plane screening influences electron-hole bilayer systems, revealing its impact on electronic properties and phase diagrams, with implications for various heterostructures.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of out-of-plane screening effects in EHBL systems using RPA and mean field methods, highlighting their significance.

Findings

OPS affects low-density, long-wavelength electronic properties.

Zero-temperature phase diagram is significantly altered by OPS.

Results are relevant to a broad class of heterostructures.

Abstract

Out-of-plane screening (OPS) is expected to occur generally in metal-semiconductor interfaces but this aspect has been overlooked in previous studies. In this paper we study the effect of OPS in electron-hole bilayer (EHBL) systems. The validity of the dipolar interaction induced by OPS is justified with a RPA calculation. Effect of OPS in electron-hole liquid with close-by screening layers is studied. We find that OPS affects the electronic properties in low density and long wavelength regime. The corresponding zero-temperature phase diagram is obtained within a mean field treatment. We argue that our result is in general relevant to other heterostrucutures. The case of strongly correlated EHBL is also discussed.