Programming Insulator-to-Metallic Transport in Insulating Materials via Surface Single-Atom Engineering.

Authors

Linhe Yu, Yihao Liu, Zhizhong Wang, Jiachen Sun, Chengyu Zhang, Di Liu, Minhao Zhang, Qianpeng Zhang, Enyuan Zhou, Hao Guo, Xiaosi Qi, Min Gao, Long Pan, Cheng Li, Hualiang Lv

Published in

Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.). Pages e73723. Jun 12, 2026. Epub Jun 12, 2026.

Abstract

Reconfigurable electronic states in insulating materials enable metal-like transport while preserving the intrinsic robustness and functional versatility of insulating hosts, thereby redefining materials beyond the conventional metal-insulator dichotomy. However, obtaining such states remains extremely challenging owing to strong electronic localization inherent in insulating materials. We demonstrate a universal surface single-atom engineering strategy for linear and deep programming of electronic transport in insulating oxides and nitrides, including SiO₂, Al₂O₃, and BN, by selectively inducing local symmetry breaking, effective bandgap compression, and impurity-band percolation. Consequently, this strategy continuously narrows the bandgap and ultimately yields metallic transport characteristics with anomalously minimal temperature dependence. Furthermore, we apply single-atom-anchored SiO₂, an intrinsically electromagnetic wave-transparent material, to shielding with a record-high effectiveness of 98.6% for an ultrathin 80 µm film that also maintains stable performance over a temperature range of 300-800 K. This counterintuitive performance defies the conventional paradigm, demonstrating that an intrinsically insulating material can achieve electromagnetic shielding comparable to state-of-the-art metals while avoiding the temperature-induced performance degradation of metallic shielding materials. Overall, we believe that this study establishes single-atom band engineering as a general strategy for programming electronic transport in insulating materials, with broad implications for advanced electronics and unconventional functionalities.

PMID:
42286919
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Jun 2026.

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