Confinement of Excited States in Two-dimensional, In-plane, Quantum Heterostructures

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2024 Jul 28

PMID 39069516

Authors

Gwangwoo Kim

Benjamin Huet

Christopher E Stevens

Kiyoung Jo

Jeng-Yuan Tsai

Saiphaneendra Bachu

Meghan Leger

Seunguk Song

Mahfujur Rahaman

Kyung Yeol Ma

Nicholas R Glavin

Hyeon Suk Shin

Nasim Alem

Qimin Yan

Joshua R Hendrickson

Joan M Redwing

Deep Jariwala

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are promising candidates for optoelectronic application and quantum information processes due to their inherent out-of-plane 2D confinement. In addition, they offer the possibility of achieving low-dimensional in-plane exciton confinement, similar to zero-dimensional quantum dots, with intriguing optical and electronic properties via strain or composition engineering. However, realizing such laterally confined 2D monolayers and systematically controlling size-dependent optical properties remain significant challenges. Here, we report the observation of lateral confinement of excitons in epitaxially grown in-plane MoSe quantum dots (~15-60 nm wide) inside a continuous matrix of WSe monolayer film via a sequential epitaxial growth process. Various optical spectroscopy techniques reveal the size-dependent exciton confinement in the MoSe monolayer quantum dots with exciton blue shift (12-40 meV) at a low temperature as compared to continuous monolayer MoSe. Finally, single-photon emission (g(0) ~ 0.4) was also observed from the smallest dots at 1.6 K. Our study opens the door to compositionally engineered, tunable, in-plane quantum light sources in 2D semiconductors.

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