No Arabic abstract
We demonstrate the continuous and reversible tuning of the optical band gap of suspended monolayer MoS2 membranes by as much as 500 meV by applying very large biaxial strains. By using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to grow crystals that are highly impermeable to gas, we are able to apply a pressure difference across suspended membranes to induce biaxial strains. We observe the effect of strain on the energy and intensity of the peaks in the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum, and find a linear tuning rate of the optical band gap of 99 meV/%. This method is then used to study the PL spectra of bilayer and trilayer devices under strain, and to find the shift rates and Gruneisen parameters of two Raman modes in monolayer MoS2. Finally, we use this result to show that we can apply biaxial strains as large as 5.6% across micron sized areas, and report evidence for the strain tuning of higher level optical transitions.
We report the influence of uniaxial tensile mechanical strain in the range 0-2.2% on the phonon spectra and bandstructures of monolayer and bilayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) two-dimensional crystals. First, we employ Raman spectroscopy to observe phonon softening with increased strain, breaking the degeneracy in the E Raman mode of MoS2, and extract a Gruneisen parameter of ~1.06. Second, using photoluminescence spectroscopy we measure a decrease in the optical band gap of MoS2 that is roughly linear with strain, ~45 meV% strain for monolayer MoS2 and ~120 meV% strain for bilayer MoS2. Third, we observe a pronounced strain-induced decrease in the photoluminescence intensity of monolayer MoS2 that is indicative of the direct-to-indirect transition of the character of the optical band gap of this material at applied strain of ~1.5%, a value supported by first-principles calculations that include excitonic effects. These observations constitute the first demonstration of strain engineering the band structure in the emergent class of two-dimensional crystals, transition-metal dichalcogenides.
Semiconducting monolayer of 2D material are able to concatenate multiple interesting properties into a single component. Here, by combining opto-mechanical and electronic measurements, we demonstrate the presence of a partial 2H-1T phase transition in a suspended 2D monolayer membrane of MoS2. Electronic transport shows unexpected memristive properties in the MoS2 membrane, in the absence of any external dopants. A strong mechanical softening of the membrane is measured concurrently and may only be related to the phase 2H-1T phase transition which imposes a 3percent directional elongation of the topological 1T phase with respect to the semiconducting 2H. We note that only a few percent 2H- 1T phase switching is sufficient to observe measurable memristive effects. Our experimental results combined with First-principles total energy calculations indicate that sulfur vacancy diffusion plays a key role in the initial nucleation of the phase transition. Our study clearly shows that nanomechanics represents an ultrasensitive technique to probe the crystal phase transition in 2D materials or thin membranes. Finally, a better control of the microscopic mechanisms responsible for the observed memristive effect in MoS2 is important for the implementation of future devices.
We investigate electronic transport in lithographically patterned graphene ribbon structures where the lateral confinement of charge carriers creates an energy gap near the charge neutrality point. Individual graphene layers are contacted with metal electrodes and patterned into ribbons of varying widths and different crystallographic orientations. The temperature dependent conductance measurements show larger energy gaps opening for narrower ribbons. The sizes of these energy gaps are investigated by measuring the conductance in the non-linear response regime at low temperatures. We find that the energy gap scales inversely with the ribbon width, thus demonstrating the ability to engineer the band gap of graphene nanostructures by lithographic processes.
The quasiparticle band-gap renormalization induced by the doped carriers is an important and well-known feature in two-dimensional semiconductors, including transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and it is of both theoretical and practical interest. To get a quantitative understanding of this effect, here we calculate the quasiparticle band-gap renormalization of the electron-doped monolayer MoS$_2$, a prototypical member of TMDs. The many-body electron-electron interaction induced renormalization of the self-energy is found within the random phase approximation and to account for the quasi-2D character of the Coulomb interaction in this system a Keldysh-type interaction with a nonlocal dielectric constant is used. Considering the renormalization of both the valence and the conduction bands, our calculations reveal a large and nonlinear band-gap renormalization upon adding free carriers to the conduction band. We find a 410 meV reduction of the band gap for the monolayer MoS$_2$ on SiO$_2$ substrate at the free carrier density $n=4.9times 10^{12} rm{cm^{-2}}$ which is in excellent agreement with available experimental results. We also discuss the role of exchange and correlation parts of the self-energy on the overall band-gap renormalization of the system. The strong dependence of the band-gap renormalization on the surrounding dielectric environment is also demonstrated in this work, and a much larger shrinkage of the band gap is predicted for the freestanding monolayer MoS$_2$.
We study the geometric and electronic structures of silicene monolayer using density functional theory based calculations. The electronic structures of silicene show that it is a semi-metal and the charge carriers in silicene behave like massless Dirac-Fermions since it possesses linear dispersion around Dirac point. Our results show that the band gap in silicene monolayer can be opened up at Fermi level due to an external electric field by breaking the inversion symmetry. The presence of buckling in geometric structure of silicene plays an important role in breaking the inversion symmetry. We also show that the band gap varies linearly with the strength of external electric field. Further, the value of band gap can be tuned over a wide range.