Strong coupling between discrete phonon and continuous electron–hole pair excitations can induce a pronounced asymmetry in the phonon line shape, known as the Fano resonance. This effect has been observed in various systems. Here we reveal explicit evidence for strong coupling between an infrared-active phonon and electronic transitions near the Weyl points through the observation of a Fano resonance in the Weyl semimetal TaAs. The resulting asymmetry in the phonon line shape, conspicuous at low temperatures, diminishes continuously with increasing temperature. This behaviour originates from the suppression of electronic transitions near the Weyl points due to the decreasing occupation of electronic states below the Fermi level (EF) with increasing temperature, as well as Pauli blocking caused by thermally excited electrons above EF. Our findings not only elucidate the mechanism governing the tunable Fano resonance but also open a route for exploring exotic physical phenomena through phonon properties in Weyl semimetals.

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Relaxor ferrolectrics are important in technological applications due to a strong electromechanical response, energy storage capacity, electrocaloric effect, and pyroelectric energy conversion properties. Current efforts to discover and design new materials in this class generally rely on substitutional doping of known ferroelectrics, as slight changes to local compositional order can significantly affect the Curie temperature, morphotropic phase boundary, and electromechanical responses. In this work, we demonstrate that moving to the strong limit of compositional complexity in an ABO3 perovskite allows stabilization of novel relaxor responses that do not rely on a single narrow phase transition region. Entropy-assisted synthesis approaches are used to create single crystal Ba(Ti0.2Sn0.2Zr0.2Hf0.2Nb0.2)O3 [Ba(5B)O] films. The high levels of configurational disorder present in this system is found to influence dielectric relaxation, phase transitions, nano-polar domain formation, and Curie temperature. Temperature-dependent dielectric, Raman spectroscopy and second-harmonic generation measurements reveal multiple phase transitions, a high Curie temperature of 570 K, and the relaxor ferroelectric nature of Ba(5B)O films. The first principles theory calculations are used to predict possible combinations of cations to quantify the relative feasibility of formation of highly disordered single-phase 2 perovskite systems. The ability to stabilize single-phase perovskites with such a large number of different cations on the B-sites offers new possibilities for designing high-performance materials for piezoelectric, pyroelectric and tunable dielectric applications.