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Register a new userUnusual Exciton-Phonon Interactions at van der Waals Engineered Interfaces
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Raman scattering is a ubiquitous phenomenon in light-matter interactions which reveals a materials electronic, structural and thermal properties. Controlling this process would enable new ways of studying and manipulating fundamental material properties. Here, we report a novel Raman scattering process at the interface between different van der Waals (vdW) materials as well as between a monolayer semiconductor and 3D crystalline substrates. We find that interfacing a WSe2 monolayer with materials such as SiO2, sapphire, and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) enables Raman transitions with phonons which are either traditionally inactive or weak. This Raman scattering can be amplified by nearly two orders of magnitude when a foreign phonon mode is resonantly coupled to the A exciton in WSe2 directly, or via an A1 optical phonon from WSe2. We further showed that the interfacial Raman scattering is distinct between hBN-encapsulated and hBN-sandwiched WSe2 sample geometries. This cross-platform electron-phonon coupling, as well as the sensitivity of 2D excitons to their phononic environments, will prove important in the understanding and engineering of optoelectronic devices based on vdW heterostructures.
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Heterostructures of atomically thin van der Waals bonded monolayers have opened a unique platform to engineer Coulomb correlations, shaping excitonic, Mott insulating, or superconducting phases. In transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures, electrons and holes residing in different monolayers can bind into spatially indirect excitons with a strong potential for optoelectronics, valleytronics, Bose condensation, superfluidity, and moire-induced nanodot lattices. Yet these ideas require a microscopic understanding of the formation, dissociation, and thermalization dynamics of correlations including ultrafast phase transitions. Here we introduce a direct ultrafast access to Coulomb correlations between monolayers; phase-locked mid-infrared pulses allow us to measure the binding energy of interlayer excitons in WSe2/WS2 hetero-bilayers by revealing a novel 1s-2p resonance, explained by a fully quantum mechanical model. Furthermore, we trace, with subcycle time resolution, the transformation of an exciton gas photogenerated in the WSe2 layer directly into interlayer excitons. Depending on the stacking angle, intra- and interlayer species coexist on picosecond scales and the 1s-2p resonance becomes renormalized. Our work provides a direct measurement of the binding energy of interlayer excitons and opens the possibility to trace and control correlations in novel artificial materials.
Due to a strong Coulomb interaction, excitons dominate the excitation kinetics in 2D materials. While Coulomb-scattering between electrons has been well studied, the interaction of excitons is more challenging and remains to be explored. As neutral composite bosons consisting of electrons and holes, excitons show a non-trivial scattering dynamics. Here, we study on microscopic footing exciton-exciton interaction in transition-metal dichalcogenides and related van der Waals heterostructures. We demonstrate that the crucial criterion for efficient scattering is a large electron/hole mass asymmetry giving rise to internal charge inhomogeneities of excitons and emphasizing their cobosonic substructure. Furthermore, both exchange and direct exciton-exciton interactions are boosted by enhanced exciton Bohr radii. We also predict an unexpected temperature dependence that is usually associated to phonon-driven scattering and we reveal an orders of magnitude stronger interaction of interlayer excitons due to their permanent dipole moment. The developed approach can be generalized to arbitrary material systems and will help to study strongly correlated exciton systems, such as moire super lattices.
The exfoliation of two naturally occurring van der Waals minerals, graphite and molybdenite, arouse an unprecedented level of interest by the scientific community and shaped a whole new field of research: 2D materials research. Several years later, the family of van der Waals materials that can be exfoliated to isolate 2D materials keeps growing, but most of them are synthetic. Interestingly, in nature plenty of naturally occurring van der Waals minerals can be found with a wide range of chemical compositions and crystal structures whose properties are mostly unexplored so far. This Perspective aims to provide an overview of different families of van der Waals minerals to stimulate their exploration in the 2D limit.
The optical properties of MoS2 monolayers are dominated by excitons, but for spectrally broad optical transitions in monolayers exfoliated directly onto SiO2 substrates detailed information on excited exciton states is inaccessible. Encapsulation in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) allows approaching the homogenous exciton linewidth, but interferences in the van der Waals heterostructures make direct comparison between transitions in optical spectra with different oscillator strength more challenging. Here we reveal in reflectivity and in photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy the presence of excited states of the A-exciton in MoS2 monolayers encapsulated in hBN layers of calibrated thickness, allowing to extrapolate an exciton binding energy of about 220 meV. We theoretically reproduce the energy separations and oscillator strengths measured in reflectivity by combining the exciton resonances calculated for a screened two-dimensional Coulomb potential with transfer matrix calculations of the reflectivity for the van der Waals structure. Our analysis shows a very different evolution of the exciton oscillator strength with principal quantum number for the screened Coulomb potential as compared to the ideal two-dimensional hydrogen model.
Hyperbolic materials exhibit unique properties that enable a variety of intriguing applications in nanophotonics. The topological insulator Bi2Se3 represents a natural hyperbolic optical medium, both in the THz and visible range. Here, using cathodoluminescence spectroscopy and electron energy-loss spectroscopy, we demonstrate that Bi2Se3, in addition to being a hyperbolic material, supports room-temperature exciton polaritons. Moreover, we explore the behavior of hyperbolic edge exciton polaritons in Bi2Se3. Edge polaritons are hybrid modes that result from the coupling of the polaritons bound to the upper and lower edges of Bi2Se3 nanoplatelets. In particular, we use electron energy-loss spectroscopy to compare Fabry-Perot-like resonances emerging in edge polariton propagation along pristine and artificially structured edges of the nanoplatelets. The experimentally observed scattering of edge polaritons by defect structures was found to be in good agreement with finite-difference time-domain simulations. Moreover, we experimentally proved coupling of localized polaritons in identical open and closed circular nanocavities to the propagating edge polaritons. Our findings are testimony to the extraordinary capability of the hyperbolic polariton propagation to cope with the presence of defects. This provides an excellent basis for applications such as nanooptical circuitry, cloaking at the nanometer scale, as well as nanoscopic quantum technology on the nanoscale.
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