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Exciton polaritons are quasiparticles of photons coupled strongly to bound electron-hole pairs, manifesting as an anti-crossing light dispersion near an exciton resonance. Highly anisotropic semiconductors with opposite-signed permittivities along different crystal axes are predicted to host exotic modes inside the anti-crossing called hyperbolic exciton polaritons (HEPs), which confine light subdiffractionally with enhanced density of states. Here, we show observational evidence of steady-state HEPs in the van der Waals magnet chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr) using a cryogenic near-infrared near-field microscope. At low temperatures, in the magnetically-ordered state, anisotropic exciton resonances sharpen, driving the permittivity negative along one crystal axis and enabling HEP propagation. We characterize HEP momentum and losses in CrSBr, also demonstrating coupling to excitonic sidebands and enhancement by magnetic order: which boosts exciton spectral weight via wavefunction delocalization. Our findings open new pathways to nanoscale manipulation of excitons and light, including routes to magnetic, nonlocal, and quantum polaritonics.

 

The optical spectra of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers are dominated by excitons and trions. Here, we establish the dependence of these optical transitions on the disorder from hyperspectral imaging of h-BN encapsulated monolayer MoSe₂. While both exciton and trion energies vary spatially, these two quantities are almost perfectly correlated, with spatial variation in the trion binding energy of only ∼0.18 meV. In contrast, variation in the energy splitting between the two lowest energy exciton states is one order of magnitude larger at ∼1.7 meV. Statistical analysis and theoretical modeling reveal that disorder results from dielectric and bandgap fluctuations, not electrostatic fluctuations. Our results shed light on disorder in high quality TMDC monolayers, its impact on optical transitions, and the many-body nature of excitons and trions.

 

Two-dimensional materials from layered van der Waals (vdW) crystals hold great promise for electronic, optoelectronic, and quantum devices, but technological implementation will be hampered by the lack of high-throughput techniques for exfoliating single-crystal monolayers with sufficient size and high quality. Here, we report a facile method to disassemble vdW single crystals layer by layer into monolayers with near-unity yield and with dimensions limited only by bulk crystal sizes. The macroscopic monolayers are comparable in quality to microscopic monolayers from conventional Scotch tape exfoliation. The monolayers can be assembled into macroscopic artificial structures, including transition metal dichalcogenide multilayers with broken inversion symmetry and substantially enhanced nonlinear optical response. This approach takes us one step closer to mass production of macroscopic monolayers and bulk-like artificial materials with controllable properties. 

Controlling charge density in two-dimensional (2D) materials is a powerful approach for engineering new electronic phases and properties. This control is traditionally realized by electrostatic gating. Here, we report an optical approach for generation of high carrier densities using transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers, WSe 2 /MoSe 2 , with type II band alignment. By tuning the optical excitation density above the Mott threshold, we realize the phase transition from interlayer excitons to charge-separated electron/hole plasmas, where photoexcited electrons and holes are localized to individual layers. High carrier densities up to 4 × 10 14 cm −2 can be sustained under both pulsed and continuous wave excitation conditions. These findings open the door to optical control of electronic phases in 2D heterobilayers. 

The synthesis, characterization, and incorporation of open-cage [60]fullerene derivatives as electron-transporting materials (ETMs) in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with an inverted planar (p-i-n) structure is reported. Following optical and electrochemical characterization of the open-cage fullerenes 2a–c, p-i-n PSCs with a indium tin oxide (ITO)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)/perovskite/fullerene/Ag structure were prepared. The devices obtained from 2a–b exhibit competitive power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) and improved open-circuit voltage (Voc) values (>1.0 V) in comparison to a reference cell based on phenyl-C61-butyric-acid methyl-ester (PC61BM). These results are rationalized in terms of a) the higher passivation ability of the open-cage fullerenes with respect to the other fullerenes, and b) a good overlap between the highest occupied molecular orbital/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (HOMO/LUMO) levels of 2a–b and the conduction band of the perovskite.