Unified formulation of excitonic absorption spectra of semiconductor quantum wells, superlattices, and quantum wires

Insights into the Growth Orientation and Phase Stability of Chemical-Vapor-Deposited Two-Dimensional Hybrid Halide Perovskite Films

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) offers a large-area, scalable, and conformal growth of perovskite thin films without the use of solvents. Low-dimensional organic-inorganic halide perovskites, with alternating layers of organic spacer groups and inorganic perovskite layers, are promising for enhancing the stability of optoelectronic devices. Moreover, their multiple quantum-well structures provide a powerful platform for tuning excitonic physics. In this work, we show that the CVD process is conducive to the growth of 2D hybrid halide perovskite films. Using butylammonium (BA) and phenylethylammonium (PEA) cations, the growth parameters of BA2PbI4 and PEA2PbI4 and mixed halide perovskite films were first optimized. These films are characterized by well-defined grain boundaries and display characteristic absorption and emission features of the 2D quantum wells. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and a noninteger dimensionality model of the absorption spectrum provide insights into the orientation of the crystalline planes. Unlike BA2PbI4, temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements from PEA2PbI4 show a single excitonic peak throughout the temperature range from 20 to 350 K, highlighting the lack of defect states. These results further corroborate the temperature-dependent synchrotron-based XRD results. Furthermore, the nonlinear optical properties of the CVD-grown perovskite films are investigated, and a high third harmonic generation efficiency is observed.

Stacking-Order-Dependent Excitonic Properties Reveal Interlayer Interactions in Bulk ReS2

Rhenium disulfide, a member of the transition metal dichalcogenide family of semiconducting materials, is unique among 2D van der Waals materials due to its anisotropy and, albeit weak, interlayer interactions, confining excitons within single atomic layers and leading to monolayer-like excitonic properties even in bulk crystals. While recent work has established the existence of two stacking modes in bulk, AA and AB, the influence of the different interlayer coupling on the excitonic properties has been poorly explored. Here, we use polarization-dependent optical measurements to elucidate the nature of excitons in AA and AB-stacked rhenium disulfide to obtain insight into the effect of interlayer interactions. We combine polarization-dependent Raman with low-temperature photoluminescence and reflection spectroscopy to show that, while the similar polarization dependence of both stacking orders indicates similar excitonic alignments within the crystal planes, differences in peak width, position, and degree of anisotropy reveal a different degree of interlayer coupling. DFT calculations confirm the very similar band structure of the two stacking orders while revealing a change of the spin-split states at the top of the valence band to possibly underlie their different exciton binding energies. These results suggest that the excitonic properties are largely determined by in-plane interactions, however, strongly modified by the interlayer coupling. These modifications are stronger than those in other 2D semiconductors, making ReS2 an excellent platform for investigating stacking as a tuning parameter for 2D materials. Furthermore, the optical anisotropy makes this material an interesting candidate for polarization-sensitive applications such as photodetectors and polarimetry.

Role of processing parameters in CVD grown crystalline monolayer MoSe2

The quality of as-synthesized monolayers plays a significant role in atomically thin semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) to determine the electronic and optical properties. For designing optoelectronic devices, exploring the effect of processing parameters on optical properties is a prerequisite. In this view, we present the influence of processing parameters on the lattice and quasiparticle dynamics of monolayer MoSe₂. The lab-built chemical vapour deposition (CVD) setup is used to synthesize monolayer MoSe₂ flakes with varying shapes, including sharp triangle (ST), truncated triangle (TT), hexagon, and rough edge circle (REC). In particular, the features of as-synthesized monolayer MoSe₂ flakes are examined using Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Raman spectra reveal that the frequency difference between the A_1g and E¹_2g peaks is >45 cm⁻¹ in all the monolayer samples. PL spectroscopy also shows that the synthesized MoSe₂ flakes are monolayer in nature with a direct band gap in the range of 1.50–1.58 eV. Furthermore, the variation in the direct band gap is analyzed using the spectral weight of quasiparticles in PL emission, where the intensity ratio {I(A⁰)/I(A⁻)} and trion binding energy are found to be ∼1.1–5.0 and ∼23.1–47.5 meV in different monolayer MoSe₂ samples. Hence, these observations manifest that the processing parameters make a substantial contribution in tuning the vibrational and excitonic properties.

Monolayer MoSe₂ flakes with varying shapes, including sharp triangle, truncated triangle, hexagon, and rough edge circle are synthesized using APCVD method. The lattice and quasiparticle dynamics are examined under different growth conditions.

Authentic Intelligent Machine for Scaling Driven Discovery: A Case for Chiral Quantum Dots

The scaling laws have long been used as evidence of science where many fundamental physics laws emerge. As emerging nanomaterials, quantum dots are also sensitive to scaling because of their strong size effect. In this work, we developed the chiral dielectric theory based on the exciton absorption mechanism to explain the increment of the dielectric constant from chirality via its dimensionality. To help researchers discover and develop scaling relevant theories, the Authentic Intelligent Machine (AIM) protocol was developed to generate and interpret experimental data in an analytical and scaling-oriented manner. We show how the AIM protocol interprets spectra such as transient absorption data of chiral quantum dots with theories, where discrepancies concerning the dielectric constant were discovered. Examples for applying the AIM protocol on other spectra, such as absorption spectra and photoluminescence spectra, are also given.

Giant Gating Tunability of Optical Refractive Index in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers

We report that the refractive index of transition metal dichacolgenide (TMDC) monolayers, such as MoS₂, WS₂, and WSe₂, can be substantially tuned by >60% in the imaginary part and >20% in the real part around exciton resonances using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible electrical gating. This giant tunablility is rooted in the dominance of excitonic effects in the refractive index of the monolayers and the strong susceptibility of the excitons to the influence of injected charge carriers. The tunability mainly results from the effects of injected charge carriers to broaden the spectral width of excitonic interband transitions and to facilitate the interconversion of neutral and charged excitons. The other effects of the injected charge carriers, such as renormalizing bandgap and changing exciton binding energy, only play negligible roles. We also demonstrate that the atomically thin monolayers, when combined with photonic structures, can enable the efficiencies of optical absorption (reflection) tuned from 40% (60%) to 80% (20%) due to the giant tunability of the refractive index. This work may pave the way toward the development of field-effect photonics in which the optical functionality can be controlled with CMOS circuits.

Design of vertical Ge quantum well asymmetric Fabry-Perot modulator without DBR

We present a vertical Ge quantum well (QW) asymmetric Fabry-Perot modulator design and integration scheme without distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). The field-dependent excitonic absorption and the modulator performance are calculated, showing the wide (20-nm-thick) well design gives a large absorption reduction for the normally-off modulator operation. For a 47 QW modulator, the theoretical contrast ratio exceeds 40 dB at 1 V and increases to 52.3 dB at 4 V bias with a 12.3-dB insertion loss and over-9-nm optical bandwidth (contrast>3dB). This robust DBR-free design can enable high-contrast-ratio Ge QW modulators.

Two- versus three-dimensional quantum confinement in indium phosphide wires and dots

The size dependence of the bandgap is the most identifiable aspect of quantum confinement in semiconductors; the bandgap increases as the nanostructure size decreases. The bandgaps in one-dimensional (1D)-confined wells, 2D-confined wires, and 3D-confined dots should evolve differently with size as a result of the differing dimensionality of confinement. However, no systematic experimental comparisons of analogous 1D, 2D or 3D confinement systems have been made. Here we report growth of indium phosphide (InP) quantum wires having diameters in the strong-confinement regime, and a comparison of their bandgaps with those previously reported for InP quantum dots. We provide theoretical evidence to establish that the quantum confinement observed in the InP wires is weakened to the expected extent, relative to that in InP dots, by the loss of one confinement dimension. Quantum wires sometimes behave as strings of quantum dots, and we propose an analysis to generally distinguish quantum-wire from quantum-dot behaviour.