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Register a new userProbing the Ultimate Plasmon Confinement Limits with a Van der Waals heterostructure
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The ability to confine light into tiny spatial dimensions is important for applications such as microscopy, sensing and nanoscale lasers. While plasmons offer an appealing avenue to confine light, Landau damping in metals imposes a trade-off between optical field confinement and losses. We show that a graphene-insulator-metal heterostructure can overcome that trade-off, and demonstrate plasmon confinement down to the ultimate limit of the lengthscale of one atom. This is achieved by far-field excitation of plasmon modes squeezed into an atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride dielectric h-BN spacer between graphene and metal rods. A theoretical model which takes into account the non-local optical response of both graphene and metal is used to describe the results. These ultra-confined plasmonic modes, addressed with far-field light excitation, enables a route to new regimes of ultra-strong light-matter interactions.
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The designer approach has become a new paradigm in accessing novel quantum phases of matter. Moreover, the realization of exotic states such as topological insulators, superconductors and quantum spin liquids often poses challenging or even contradictory demands for any single material. For example, it is presently unclear if topological superconductivity, which has been suggested as a key ingredient for topological quantum computing, exists at all in any naturally occurring material . This problem can be circumvented by using designer heterostructures combining different materials, where the desired physics emerges from the engineered interactions between the different components. Here, we employ the designer approach to demonstrate two major breakthroughs - the fabrication of van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures combining 2D ferromagnetism with superconductivity and the observation of 2D topological superconductivity. We use molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) to grow two-dimensional islands of ferromagnetic chromium tribromide (CrBr$_3$) on superconducting niobium diselenide (NbSe$_2$) and show the signatures of one-dimensional Majorana edge modes using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS). The fabricated two-dimensional vdW heterostructure provides a high-quality controllable platform that can be integrated in device structures harnessing topological superconductivity. Finally, layered heterostructures can be readily accessed by a large variety of external stimuli potentially allowing external control of 2D topological superconductivity through electrical, mechanical, chemical, or optical means.
The fabrication of van der Waals heterostructures, artificial materials assembled by individually stacking atomically thin (2D) materials, is one of the most promising directions in 2D materials research. Until now, the most widespread approach to stack 2D layers relies on deterministic placement methods which are cumbersome when fabricating multilayered stacks. Moreover, they tend to suffer from poor control over the lattice orientations and the presence of unwanted adsorbates between the stacked layers. Here, we present a different approach to fabricate ultrathin heterostructures by exfoliation of bulk franckeite which is a naturally occurring and air stable van der Waals heterostructure (composed of alternating SnS2-like and PbS-like layers stacked on top of each other). Presenting both an attractive narrow bandgap (<0.7 eV) and p-type doping, we find that the material can be exfoliated both mechanically and chemically down to few-layer thicknesses. We present extensive theoretical and experimental characterizations of the materials electronic properties and crystal structure, and explore applications for near-infrared photodetectors (exploiting its narrow bandgap) and for p-n junctions based on the stacking of MoS2 (n-doped) and franckeite (p-doped)
When two superconductors are connected across a ferromagnet, the spin configuration of the transferred Cooper pairs can be modulated due to magnetic exchange interaction. The resulting supercurrent can reverse its sign across the Josephson junction (JJ) [1-4]. Here we demonstrate Josephson phase modulation in van der Waals heterostructures when Cooper pairs from superconducting NbSe$_2$ tunnel through atomically thin magnetic insulator (MI) Cr$_2$Ge$_2$Te$_6$. Employing a superconducting quantum interference device based on MI JJs, we probe a doubly degenerate non-trivial JJ phase ($phi$) originating from the magnetic barrier. This $phi$-phase JJ is formed by momentum conserving tunneling of Ising Cooper pairs [5] across magnetic domains in the Cr$_2$Ge$_2$Te$_6$ barrier. The doubly degenerate ground states in MI JJs provide a two-level quantum system that can be utilized as a new disipationless component for superconducting quantum devices, including phase batteries [6], memories [7,8], and quantum Ratchets [9,10].
Heavy fermion systems represent one of the paradigmatic strongly correlated states of matter. They have been used as a platform for investigating exotic behavior ranging from quantum criticality and non-Fermi liquid behavior to unconventional topological superconductivity. Heavy fermions arise from the exchange interaction between localized magnetic moments and conduction electrons that leads to the well-known Kondo effect. In a Kondo lattice, the interaction between the localized moments gives rise to a band with heavy effective mass. This intriguing phenomenology has so far only been realized in compounds containing rare-earth elements with 4f or 5f electrons. Here, we realize a designer van der Waals heterostructure where artificial heavy fermions emerge from the Kondo coupling between a lattice of localized magnetic moments and itinerant electrons in a 1T/1H-TaS$_2$ heterostructure. We study the heterostructure using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS) and show that depending on the stacking order of the monolayers, we can either reveal the localized magnetic moments and the associated Kondo effect, or the conduction electrons with a heavy-fermion hybridization gap. Our experiments realize an ultimately tuneable platform for future experiments probing enhanced many-body correlations, dimensional tuning of quantum criticality, and unconventional superconductivity in two-dimensional artificial heavy-fermion systems.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new type of materials under intense study because of their interesting physical properties and wide range of potential applications from nanoelectronics to sensing and photonics. Monolayers of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2 or WSe2 have been proposed as promising channel materials for field-effect transistors (FETs). Their high mechanical flexibility, stability and quality coupled with potentially inexpensive production methods offer potential advantages compared to organic and crystalline bulk semiconductors. Due to quantum mechanical confinement, the band gap in monolayer MoS2 is direct in nature, leading to a strong interaction with light that can be exploited for building phototransistors and ultrasensitive photodetectors. Here, we report on the realization of light-emitting diodes based on vertical heterojunctions composed of n-type monolayer MoS2 and p-type silicon. Careful interface engineering allows us to realize diodes showing rectification and light emission from the entire surface of the heterojunction. Electroluminescence spectra show clear signs of direct excitons related to the optical transitions between the conduction and valence bands. Our pn diodes can also operate as solar cells, with typical external quantum efficiency exceeding 4%. Our work opens up the way to more sophisticated optoelectronic devices such as lasers and heterostructure solar cells based on hybrids of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors and silicon.
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