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VAN DER WAALS HETEROSTRUCTURES

Rydberg spectroscopy of indirect excitons

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 658–659 (2019)Cite this article

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Measuring the 1s–2p splitting of direct and indirect excitons in van der Waals heterostructures allows their binding energy and dynamics to be determined.

The field of two-dimensional materials was launched by the discovery of graphene and its unique properties, such as the linear dispersion relation for electrons, which results in them mimicking photons1. However, the band structure of graphene also limited its applications in electronics and optoelectronics. This limitation was overcome by the discovery of a new class of two-dimensional materials, the transition metal dichalcogenides, which have a bandgap and are semiconductors that interact strongly with light in the limit of a single monolayer, especially when a bound electron–hole pair, known as an exciton, is created2,3. Heterostructures of transition metal dichalcogenides can be made, which enhances their technological relevance. Recently, heterostructures that display charge separation have been realized; however, it has been difficult to characterize charge-separated states optically because charge separation weakens their interaction with light. As reported in Nature Materials, this challenge has been overcome by P. Merkl and colleagues4 using mid-infrared spectroscopy to probe the internal states of the interlayer excitons.

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Fig. 1: Excitonic transitions in heterostructures.

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  1. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Steven T. Cundiff

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  1. Steven T. Cundiff
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Correspondence to Steven T. Cundiff.

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Cundiff, S.T. Rydberg spectroscopy of indirect excitons. Nat. Mater. 18, 658–659 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0410-8

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