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Title: Environmental Screening Effects in 2D Materials: Renormalization of the Bandgap, Electronic Structure, and Optical Spectra of Few-Layer Black Phosphorus

Journal Article · · Nano Letters
ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Few-layer black phosphorus has recently emerged as a potential 2D semiconductor, notable for its widely tunable bandgap, highly anisotropic properties, and theoretically predicted large exciton binding energies. To avoid degradation, it has become common practice to encapsulate black phosphorus devices. It is generally assumed that this encapsulation does not qualitatively affect their optical properties. In this work, we show that the contrary is true. We have performed ab initio GW and GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation (GW-BSE) calculations to determine the quasiparticle (QP) band structure and optical spectrum of one-layer (1L) through four-layer (4L) black phosphorus, with and without encapsulation between hexagonal boron nitride and sapphire. We show that black phosphorus is exceptionally sensitive to environmental screening. Encapsulation reduces the exciton binding energy in 1L by as much as 70% and completely eliminates the presence of a bound exciton in the 4L structure. The reduction in the exciton binding energies is offset by a similarly large renormalization of the QP bandgap so that the optical gap remains nearly unchanged, yet the nature of the excited states and the qualitative features of the absorption spectrum change dramatically.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1484732
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 17, Issue 8; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 116 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (25)

Highly Anisotropic GeSe Nanosheets for Phototransistors with Ultrahigh Photoresponsivity journal June 2018
Ultrasensitive tunability of the direct bandgap of 2D InSe flakes via strain engineering journal January 2018
Stochastic time-dependent DFT with optimally tuned range-separated hybrids: Application to excitonic effects in large phosphorene sheets journal May 2019
Giant gate-tunable bandgap renormalization and excitonic effects in a 2D semiconductor journal July 2019
Black phosphorus: ambient degradation and strategies for protection journal April 2018
k · p theory for phosphorene: Effective g -factors, Landau levels, and excitons journal September 2019
Ice‐Assisted Synthesis of Black Phosphorus Nanosheets as a Metal‐Free Photocatalyst: 2D/2D Heterostructure for Broadband H 2 Evolution journal May 2019
Charged impurity-tuning of midgap states in biased Bernal bilayer black phosphorus: an anisotropic electronic phase transition journal January 2018
Origin of the electromagnetic anisotropy in monolayer black phosphorus journal November 2019
Theory and Ab Initio Calculation of Optically Excited States—Recent Advances in 2D Materials journal December 2019
Tunable Type-II Bi VO 4 / g - C 3 N 4 Nanoheterostructures for Photocatalysis Applications journal April 2019
Dielectric embedding GW for weakly coupled molecule-metal interfaces journal February 2020
Shell model extension to the valence force field: application to single-layer black phosphorus journal January 2019
Intrinsic Correlation between Electronic Structure and Degradation: From Few‐Layer to Bulk Black Phosphorus journal March 2019
Tunable bright interlayer excitons in few-layer black phosphorus based van der Waals heterostructures journal September 2018
A dielectric-defined lateral heterojunction in a monolayer semiconductor journal February 2019
Environmentally sensitive theory of electronic and optical transitions in atomically thin semiconductors journal January 2018
Unraveling the not-so-large trion binding energy in monolayer black phosphorus journal September 2018
Quasiparticle electronic structure of honeycomb C 3 N: from monolayer to bulk journal November 2018
Modifying the sensibility of nonmetal-doped phosphorene by local or global properties journal January 2019
Intrinsic Correlation between Electronic Structure and Degradation: From Few‐Layer to Bulk Black Phosphorus journal January 2019
k.p theory for phosphorene: Effective g-factors, Landau levels, and excitons text January 2019
Environmentally-Sensitive Theory of Electronic and Optical Transitions in Atomically-Thin Semiconductors text January 2017
Stochastic Time-Dependent DFT with Optimally Tuned Range-Separated Hybrids: Application to Excitonic Effects in Large Phosphorene Sheets text January 2019
Dielectric embedding GW for weakly coupled molecule-metal interfaces text January 2019