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Exciton Hall effect in monolayer MoS2

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 1193–1197 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The spontaneous Hall effect driven by the quantum Berry phase (which serves as an internal magnetic flux in momentum space) manifests the topological nature of quasiparticles and can be used to control the information flow, such as spin and valley1,2. We report a Hall effect of excitons (fundamental composite particles of electrons and holes that dominate optical responses in semiconductors3). By polarization-resolved photoluminescence mapping, we directly observed the Hall effect of excitons in monolayer MoS2 and valley-selective spatial transport of excitons on a micrometre scale. The Hall angle of excitons is found to be much larger than that of single electrons in monolayer MoS2 (ref. 4), implying that the quantum transport of the composite particles is significantly affected by their internal structures. The present result not only poses a fundamental problem of the Hall effect in composite particles, but also offers a route to explore exciton-based valleytronics in two-dimensional materials.

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Figure 1: Experimental concept of the exciton Hall effect in monolayer MoS2.
Figure 2: Diffusion of excitons in monolayer MoS2.
Figure 3: The exciton Hall effect.
Figure 4: Selective spatial transport of valley-polarized excitons.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Nagaosa, A. Fujimori, M. Yoshida and F. Qin for helpful discussions. M.O. is supported by Advanced Leading Graduate Course for Photon Science (ALPS). M.O. and Y.Z. were supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through the Research Fellowship for Young Scientists. T.I. was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (No. JP15H06133) and Challenging Research (Exploratory) (No. JP17K18748) from JSPS. This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for specially promoted research (No. 25000003) from JSPS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC) and Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

    Masaru Onga, Toshiya Ideue & Yoshihiro Iwasa

  2. The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University, Osaka 067-0047, Japan

    Yijin Zhang

  3. Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Stuttgart D-70569, Germany

    Yijin Zhang

  4. RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan

    Yoshihiro Iwasa

Authors
  1. Masaru Onga
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  2. Yijin Zhang
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Contributions

All authors conceived and designed the research. M.O. and Y.Z. built the measurement system. M.O. performed the measurements and analysed the data. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yoshihiro Iwasa.

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Onga, M., Zhang, Y., Ideue, T. et al. Exciton Hall effect in monolayer MoS2. Nature Mater 16, 1193–1197 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4996

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