Enhancing shift current response via virtual multiband transitions

Materials exhibiting a significant shift current response could potentially outperform conventional solar cell materials. The myriad of factors governing shift-current response, however, poses significant challenges in finding such strong shift-current materials. Here we propose a general design principle that exploits inter-orbital mixing to excite virtual multiband transitions in materials with multiple flat bands to achieve an enhanced shift current response. We further relate this design principle to maximizing Wannier function spread as expressed through the formalism of quantum geometry. We demonstrate the viability of our design using a 1D stacked Rice-Mele model. Furthermore, we consider a concrete material realization - alternating angle twisted multilayer graphene (TMG) - a natural platform to experimentally realize such an effect. We identify a set of twist angles at which the shift current response is maximized via virtual transitions for each multilayer graphene and highlight the importance of TMG as a promising material to achieve an enhanced shift current response at terahertz frequencies. Our proposed mechanism also applies to other 2D systems and can serve as a guiding principle for designing multiband systems that exhibit an enhanced shift current response.