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Evidence for moiré excitons in van der Waals heterostructures

Journal Article · · Nature (London)
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  1. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Physics and Center for Complex Quantum Systems
  2. National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO (United States)
  3. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Materials Science Division
  4. Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States). Dept. of Physics
  5. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Microelectronics Research Center, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  6. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
  7. National Inst. of Material Science, Ibaraki (Japan)
  8. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, and Texas Materials Inst.
  9. Hanyang Univ., Ansan (Korea). Dept. of Photonics and Nanoelectronics and Dept. of Applied Physics

Recent advances in the isolation and stacking of monolayers of van der Waals materials have provided approaches for the preparation of quantum materials in the ultimate two-dimensional limit(1,2). In van der Waals heterostructures formed by stacking two monolayer semiconductors, lattice mismatch or rotational misalignment introduces an in-plane moire superlattice(3). It is widely recognized that the moire superlattice can modulate the electronic band structure of the material and lead to transport properties such as unconventional superconductivity(4) and insulating behaviour driven by correlations(5-7); however, the influence of the moire superlattice on optical properties has not been investigated experimentally. Here we report the observation of multiple interlayer exciton resonances with either positive or negative circularly polarized emission in a molybdenum diselenide/tungsten diselenide (MoSe2/WSe2) heterobilayer with a small twist angle. We attribute these resonances to excitonic ground and excited states confined within the moire potential. This interpretation is supported by recombination dynamics and by the dependence of these interlayer exciton resonances on twist angle and temperature. These results suggest the feasibility of engineering artificial excitonic crystals using van der Waals heterostructures for nanophotonics and quantum information applications.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; National Science Foundation (NSF); Welch Foundation; China Scholarship Council; Army Research Office; Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) - Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) - KAKENHI
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1503250
Journal Information:
Nature (London), Journal Name: Nature (London) Journal Issue: 7746 Vol. 567; ISSN 0028-0836
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (52)

Multiflat Bands and Strong Correlations in Twisted Bilayer Boron Nitride: Doping-Induced Correlated Insulator and Superconductor journal July 2019
Large-area, periodic, and tunable intrinsic pseudo-magnetic fields in low-angle twisted bilayer graphene journal January 2020
Polar coupling enabled nonlinear optical filtering at MoS2/ferroelectric heterointerfaces journal March 2020
Twist Angle mapping in layered WS2 by Polarization-Resolved Second Harmonic Generation journal October 2019
Flat Band and Hole-induced Ferromagnetism in a Novel Carbon Monolayer journal December 2019
Quantum Materials with Atomic Precision: Artificial Atoms in Solids: Ab Initio Design, Control, and Integration of Single Photon Emitters in Artificial Quantum Materials journal September 2019
Tunable Moiré Superlattice of Artificially Twisted Monolayers journal July 2019
Polaronic Trions at the MoS 2 /SrTiO 3 Interface journal August 2019
Controlled Growth and Thickness‐Dependent Conduction‐Type Transition of 2D Ferrimagnetic Cr 2 S 3 Semiconductors journal December 2019
Inorganic 2D Luminescent Materials: Structure, Luminescence Modulation, and Applications journal October 2019
Recent Progress on Exciton Polaritons in Layered Transition‐Metal Dichalcogenides journal September 2019
Functional Mid‐Infrared Polaritonics in van der Waals Crystals journal November 2019
Strong Light–Matter Interactions Enabled by Polaritons in Atomically Thin Materials journal January 2020
Nonlinear optics of two‐dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides journal July 2019
Interlayer Excitons in Transition‐Metal Dichalcogenide Heterobilayers journal November 2019
Multiphonon Raman Scattering in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Double Layers journal January 2020
Charge‐Accumulation Effect in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterobilayers journal August 2019
Self-organized twist-heterostructures via aligned van der Waals epitaxy and solid-state transformations journal December 2019
Rydberg spectroscopy of indirect excitons journal June 2019
Correlating the three-dimensional atomic defects and electronic properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides journal March 2020
Tunable crystal symmetry in graphene–boron nitride heterostructures with coexisting moiré superlattices journal September 2019
Valley-polarized exciton currents in a van der Waals heterostructure journal October 2019
Identification of spin, valley and moiré quasi-angular momentum of interlayer excitons journal August 2019
Resonantly hybridized excitons in moiré superlattices in van der Waals heterostructures journal March 2019
General synthesis of two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructure arrays journal March 2020
A two-dimensional ErCu 2 intermetallic compound on Cu(111) with moiré-pattern-modulated electronic structures journal January 2020
Advances of 2D bismuth in energy sciences journal January 2020
Evolution of inter-layer coupling in artificially stacked bilayer MoS 2 journal January 2019
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Cation exchange synthesis of two-dimensional vertical Cu 2 S/CdS heterojunctions for photovoltaic device applications journal January 2020
Defect modification engineering on a laminar MoS 2 film for optimizing thermoelectric properties journal January 2020
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Gate-tunable flat bands in van der Waals patterned dielectric superlattices journal December 2019
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