Excitonic Insulator and Possible Superfluid Based on Two-Dimensional Diamond

Abstract

Recent research on excitonic insulator has progressed mainly based on narrow bandgap semiconductor or semimetal. Herein, we realize excitonic insulator based on two-dimensional (2D) wide band gap diamond with transition temperature as high as 220K. The resistance rises dramatically by more than three orders, which can be explained by the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of excitons. While cooling down below transition temperature, the wavelength of the bound excitons caused by boron and nitrogen centers becomes highly overlapped, leading to BEC process. Furthermore, the variable range hopping mechanism is used to simulate the resistance as a function of temperature, which reveals the formation of excitonic insulator. When temperature drops down further, a sudden drop of resistance over three orders was observed around 60K, possibly due to the formation of non-equilibrium excitonic superfluid resulting from highly overlap of wavelength of the large density bound excitons at lower temperature. This study provides evidences for excitonic insulator and possible superfluid phase based on wide bandgap semiconductor.