IRG2 has pushed the boundaries of energy transport in superatomic materials, controlling phonon, electron, and exciton interactions. The team published a breakthrough report in Science and several follow up demonstrations of acoustic exciton-polarons quasiparticles in materials, such as the superatomic semiconductor Re6Se8Cl2 (Fig. 1a,b), which enable ultrafast, phonon-shielded transport, surpassing silicon. The team also uncovered coherent superradiant transport in 1D superatomic crystals. We have now published a theoretical model to explain this new transport behavior.
Building from this, the IRG2 team has fabricated rod-shaped photodetectors (Fig. 1c) and demonstrated that photogenerated acoustic polarons travel over 5 microns, with 1/distance scaling (Fig. 1d, top), confirming lossless, isotropic two-dimensional transport at room temperature. These results enable acoustic polaron transistors, enabling ultrafast, phonon-shielded charge propagation that outperforms conventional semiconductors. Experiments also show continuous-wave excitation generates polaron-driven photocurrents (Fig. 1d, bottom), with distinct transport behavior linked to weak polaron–polaron interactions in steady-state conditions.
