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Terahertz sensing based on the nonlinear electrodynamics of the two-dimensional correlated topological semimetal TaIrTe4

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 578–586 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The development of terahertz-sensing technologies has been limited by the lack of sensitive, broadband and fast terahertz detectors. Thermal bolometers are bulky and slow, whereas electronic terahertz detectors (such as Schottky diodes) are fast, but their sensitivity degrades quickly outside a narrow frequency window. Here, we show that a two-dimensional correlated topological semimetal, tantalum iridium telluride (TaIrTe4), has a large room-temperature nonlinear Hall effect and that the interaction between this effect and terahertz nonlinear electrodynamics can be used as a mechanism for terahertz sensing. Our photodetectors exhibit a high sensitivity (noise-equivalent power of around 1 pW Hz−1/2) and a large zero-bias responsivity (around 0.3 A W−1) over a broadband spectral range (0.1–10 THz) at room temperature with an intrinsic ultrafast response time (picoseconds). The zero-bias responsivity and noise-equivalent power performance can be further improved (to 18 A W−1 and 0.05 pW Hz−1/2, respectively) by introducing gate-tunable electron correlations.

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Fig. 1: Large NHE in few-layer TaIrTe4 at room temperature.
Fig. 2: Room-temperature terahertz rectification in few-layer TaIrTe4 topological semimetals.
Fig. 3: Enhanced terahertz electrodynamics due to correlated charge ordering in few-layer TaIrTe4.
Fig. 4: Electrostatic gate control of electron correlation and terahertz rectification.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available via Dryad (an open-access data repository) at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d7wm37qcg. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes used for the calculations are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

T.X., J.R. and J.X. acknowledge primary support from the Office of Naval Research (Grant No. N00014-24-1-2068). C.F. and J.X. acknowledge further support from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. DMR-2237761). Y.M., H.J. and Y.W. acknowledge support from the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Grant No. DE-SC0024176). J.L. and L.P. are supported by the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center programme through the UT Knoxville Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (Grant No. DMR-2309083). Y.Z. is supported by the start-up fund at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. D.R. and Y.H. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through the University of Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (Grant No. DMR-2309000). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the JSPS (KAKENHI Grant Nos. 21H05233 and 23H02052) and the World Premier International Research Center Initiative, MEXT, Japan. Y.G. and D.v.d.W. are supported by the US Office of Naval Research under PANTHER award number N00014-24-1-2200 through T. Bentley.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Tairan Xi, Yangchen He, Jack Rollins, Daniel Rhodes, Ying Wang & Jun Xiao

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Haotian Jiang, Yuchen Gu, Yulu Mao, Daniel van der Weide, Ying Wang & Jun Xiao

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Jiangxu Li, Louis Primeau & Yang Zhang

  4. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Carter Fox, Daniel Rhodes, Ying Wang & Jun Xiao

  5. Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi

  6. Research Center for Electronic and Optical Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe

  7. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Yang Zhang

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  1. Tairan Xi
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Contributions

J.X. conceived the research. J.X. and T.X. designed the experiments. Y.W. and J.X. supervised the project. Y.H. synthesized the bulk high-quality TaIrTe4 crystals under the guidance of D.R. T.T. and K.W. provided the high-quality hBN bulk crystals. Y.G. designed the terahertz-sensing device with H.J. and T.X. under the guidance of D.v.d.W., Y.W. and J.X. Besides, H.J., C.F., T.X. and Y.M. fabricated the devices under the guidance of Y.W. and J.X. In addition, T.X. performed the terahertz photocurrent and SHG measurements and analysed the data with J.X. J.R. conducted the atomic force microscopy measurements. T.X. and H.J. conducted electrical transport measurements. J.L., L.P. and Y.Z. performed the first-principles and Hartree–Fock calculations. All authors discussed the results and jointly wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ying Wang or Jun Xiao.

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Competing interests

J.X., Y.W. and D.v.d.W. have submitted a patent application (‘Terahertz radiation detectors based on thin films of non-centrosymmetric layered topological semimetals’; US No. 18/448,648) that covers a specific aspect of the manuscript. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Electronics thanks Xinlong Xu, Changgan Zeng and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Xi, T., Jiang, H., Li, J. et al. Terahertz sensing based on the nonlinear electrodynamics of the two-dimensional correlated topological semimetal TaIrTe4. Nat Electron 8, 578–586 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01397-z

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