Excitonic complexes and optical gain in two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott transition

Zhen Wang; Hao Sun; Qiyao Zhang; Jiabin Feng; Jianxing Zhang; Yongzhuo Li; Cun-Zheng Ning

doi:10.1038/s41377-020-0278-z

Go to Nature Website

Your Location：

Home >

Browse articles >

Excitonic complexes and optical gain in two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott transition

Article

- Excitonic complexes and optical gain in two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott transition
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 9, Issue 2, Pages: 359-368(2020)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, China
  2.Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, 100084 Beijing, China
  3.Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, 100084 Beijing, China
  4.School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
- Author bio：
  
  Cun-Zheng Ning (cning@tsinghua.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-020-0278-z
  CLC：
- Published：2020，
  
  Published Online：10 March 2020，
  
  Received：21 January 2020，
  
  Revised：21 February 2020，
  
  Accepted：27 February 2020
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Wang, Z. et al. Excitonic complexes and optical gain in two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott transition. Light: Science & Applications, 9, 359-368 (2020).
DOI：

Wang, Z. et al. Excitonic complexes and optical gain in two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott transition. Light: Science & Applications, 9, 359-368 (2020). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-020-0278-z.

摘要

Abstract

Semiconductors that can provide optical gain at extremely low carrier density levels are critically important for applications such as energy efficient nanolasers. However

all current semiconductor lasers are based on traditional semiconductor materials that require extremely high density levels above the so-called Mott transition to realize optical gain. The new emerging 2D materials provide unprecedented opportunities for studying new excitonic physics and exploring new optical gain mechanisms at much lower density levels due to the strong Coulomb interaction and co-existence and mutual conversion of excitonic complexes. Here

we report a new gain mechanism involving charged excitons or trions in electrically gated 2D molybdenum ditelluride well below the Mott density. Our combined experimental and modelling study not only reveals the complex interplay of excitonic complexes well below the Mott transition but also establishes 2D materials as a new class of gain materials at densities 4–5 orders of magnitude lower than those of conventional semiconductors and provides a foundation for lasing at ultralow injection levels for future energy efficient photonic devices. Additionally

our study could help reconcile recent conflicting results on 2D materials: While 2D material-based lasers have been demonstrated at extremely low densities with spectral features dominated by various excitonic complexes

optical gain was only observed in experiments at densities several orders of magnitude higher

beyond the Mott density. We believe that our results could lead to more systematic studies on the relationship between the mutual conversion of excitonic species and the existence of optical gain well below the Mott transition.

关键词

Keywords

references

Almand-Hunter, A. E. et al. Quantum droplets of electrons and holes.Nature506, 471-475 (2014)..

Keldysh, L. V.Macroscopic Coherent States of Excitons in Semiconductors(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995).

Zimmermann, R. Many-Particle Theory of Highly Excited Semiconductors (B.G. Teubner, Leipzig, 1988).

Mott, N. F. The basis of the electron theory of metals, with special reference to the transition metals.Proc. Phys. Soc. Sect. A62, 416-422 (1949)..

Semkat, D. et al. Ionization equilibrium in an excited semiconductor: Mott transition versus Bose-Einstein condensation.Phys. Rev. B80, 155201 (2009)..

Klingshirn, C.&Haug, H. Optical properties of highly excited direct gap semiconductors.Phys. Rep.70, 315-398 (1981)..

Asano, K.&Yoshioka, T. Exciton-Mott physics in two-dimensional electron-hole systems: phase diagram and single-particle spectra.J. Phys. Soc. Jpn.83, 084702 (2014)..

Tanaka, I.&Nakayama, M. Stimulated emission due to the inelastic scattering from the heavy-hole exciton to the light-hole exciton in CuI thin films.J. Appl. Phys.92, 3511-3516 (2002)..

Ding, J. et al. Excitonic gain and laser emission in ZnSe-based quantum wells.Phys. Rev. Lett.69, 1707-1710 (1992)..

Kreller, F. et al. Role of biexcitons in the stimulated emission of wide-gap II-VI quantum wells.Phys. Rev. Lett.75, 2420-2423 (1995)..

Hayamizu, Y. et al. Biexciton gain and the Mott transition in GaAs quantum wires.Phys. Rev. Lett.99, 167403 (2007)..

Puls, J. et al. Laser action of trions in a semiconductor quantum well.Phys. Rev. Lett.89, 287402 (2002)..

Wu, K. F. et al. Towards zero-threshold optical gain using charged semiconductor quantum dots.Nat. Nanotechnol.12, 1140-1147 (2017)..

Tassone, F.&Yamamoto, Y. Exciton-exciton scattering dynamics in a semiconductor microcavity and stimulated scattering into polaritons.Phys. Rev. B59, 10830-10842 (1999)..

Klimov, V. I. et al. Optical gain and stimulated emission in nanocrystal quantum dots.Science290, 314-317 (2000)..

Klimov, V. I. et al. Single-exciton optical gain in semiconductor nanocrystals.Nature447, 441-446 (2007)..

Mak, K. F. et al. Tightly bound trions in monolayer MoS2.Nat. Mater.12, 207-211 (2013)..

Ross, J. S. et al. Electrical control of neutral and charged excitons in a monolayer semiconductor.Nat. Commun.4, 1417 (2013)..

Yang, J. et al. Robust excitons and trions in monolayer MoTe2.ACS Nano9, 6603-6609 (2015)..

Courtade, E. et al. Charged excitons in monolayer WSe2: experiment and theory.Phys. Rev. B96, 085302 (2017)..

You, Y. M. et al. Observation of biexcitons in monolayer WSe2.Nat. Phys.11, 477-481 (2015)..

Shang, J. Z. et al. Observation of excitonic fine structure in a 2D transition-metal dichalcogenide semiconductor.ACS Nano9, 647-655 (2015)..

Plechinger, G. et al. Identification of excitons, trions and biexcitons in single-layer WS2.Phys. Status Solidi -Rapid Res. Lett.9, 457-461 (2015)..

Wu, S. F. et al. Monolayer semiconductor nanocavity lasers with ultralow thresholds.Nature520, 69-72 (2015)..

Li, Y. Z. et al. Room-temperature continuous-wave lasing from monolayer molybdenum ditelluride integrated with a silicon nanobeam cavity.Nat. Nanotechnol.12, 987-992 (2017)..

Ye, Y. et al. Monolayer excitonic laser.Nat. Photonics9, 733-737 (2015)..

Liu, X. Z. et al. Strong light-matter coupling in two-dimensional atomic crystals.Nat. Photonics9, 30-34 (2015)..

Salehzadeh, O. et al. Optically pumped two-dimensional MoS2 lasers operating at room-temperature.Nano Lett.15, 5302-5306 (2015)..

Reed, J. C. et al. Wavelength tunable microdisk cavity light source with a chemically enhanced MoS2 emitter.Nano Lett.15, 1967-1971 (2015)..

Chernikov, A. et al. Population inversion and giant bandgap renormalization in atomically thin WS2 layers.Nat. Photonics9, 466-470 (2015)..

Meckbach, L., Stroucken, T.&Koch, S. W. Giant excitation induced bandgap renormalization in TMDC monolayers.Appl. Phys. Lett.112, 061104 (2018)..

Lohof, F. et al. Prospects and limitations of transition metal dichalcogenide laser gain materials.Nano Lett.19, 210-217 (2019)..

Ross, J. S. et al. Electrically tunable excitonic light-emitting diodes based on monolayer WSe2 p-n junctions.Nat. Nanotechnol.9, 268-272 (2014)..

Bie, Y. Q. et al. A MoTe2-based light-emitting diode and photodetector for silicon photonic integrated circuits.Nat. Nanotechnol.12, 1124-1129 (2017)..

Robert, C. et al. Excitonic properties of semiconducting monolayer and bilayer MoTe2.Phys. Rev. B94, 155425 (2016)..

Lezama, I. G. et al. Indirect-to-direct band gap crossover in few-layer MoTe2.Nano Lett.15, 2336-2342 (2015)..

Koirala, S. et al. Homogeneous linewidth broadening and exciton dephasing mechanism in MoTe2.Phys. Rev. B93, 075411 (2016)..

Faist, J. et al. Quantum cascade lasers without intersubband population inversion.Phys. Rev. Lett.76, 411-414 (1996)..

Siviniant, J. et al. Chemical equilibrium between excitons, electrons, and negatively charged excitons in semiconductor quantum wells.Phys. Rev. B59, 1602-1604 (1999)..

Sidler, M. et al. Fermi polaron-polaritons in charge-tunable atomically thin semiconductors.Nat. Phys.13, 255-261 (2017)..

Efimkin, D. K.&MacDonald, A. H. Many-body theory of Trion absorption features in two-dimensional semiconductors.Phys. Rev. B95, 035417 (2017)..

Ding, K. et al. Modulation bandwidth and energy efficiency of metallic cavity semiconductor nanolasers with inclusion of noise effects.Laser Photonics Rev.9, 488-497 (2015)..

Feng, J. B. et al. External quantum efficiency of monolayer MoTe2 based near-infrared light emitting diodes. Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (San Jose, CA, U.S.: OSA, 2019).https://doi.org/10.1364/CLEO_SI.2019.STh3O.1https://doi.org/10.1364/CLEO_SI.2019.STh3O.1.

Zhang, J. X. et al. Cavity enhanced trion emission from a bilayer MoTe2 on silicon. Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (San Jose, CA, U.S.: OSA, 2019).https://doi.org/10.1364/CLEO_SI.2019.STh1J.7https://doi.org/10.1364/CLEO_SI.2019.STh1J.7.

Views

Downloads

CSCD

Alert me when the article has been cited

Submit

Tools

Publicity Resources

No data

Related Author

No data

Related Institution

No data

⁰