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Anisotropic structural dynamics of monolayer crystals revealed by femtosecond surface X-ray scattering

Nature Photonics volume 13, pages 425–430 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ultrafast X-ray scattering is one of the primary tools to track intrinsic crystallographic evolution with atomic accuracy in real time. However, its application to study nonequilibrium structural properties at the two-dimensional limit remains a long-standing challenge due to a significant reduction of diffraction volume and complexity of data analysis. Here, we report femtosecond surface X-ray diffraction in combination with crystallographic model-refinement calculations to quantify the ultrafast structural dynamics of monolayer WSe2 crystals supported on a substrate. We found the absorbed optical photon energy is preferably coupled to the in-plane lattice vibrations within one picosecond whereas the out-of-plane lattice vibration amplitude remains unchanged during the first ten picoseconds. The model-assisted fitting suggests an asymmetric intralayer spacing change upon excitation. The observed nonequilibrium anisotropic structural dynamics agrees with first-principles modelling in both real and momentum space, marking the distinct structural dynamics of monolayer crystals from their bulk counterparts.

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Fig. 1: Experimental set-up and static surface X-ray diffraction.
Fig. 2: In-plane structural dynamics.
Fig. 3: Out-of-plane structural dynamics.
Fig. 4: NAQMD simulations.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

I.-C.T., Q.Z., K.S., G.C., X.X. and H.W. acknowledge support from the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract no. DE-SC0012509. A.K., H.K., A.N., F.S., R.K.K. and P.V. acknowledge support of the Computational Materials Sciences Program funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, under Award Number DE-SC0014607. E.M.M., C.N., A.M.L. and T.F.H. acknowledge support by the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. F.E. gratefully acknowledges grant LPDS 2013-13 from the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. NAQMD simulations were performed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility under the Department of Energy, the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment Program and at the Center for High Performance Computing of the University of Southern California. Use of the Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. Work at the Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. S.Sa. was supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding from Argonne National Laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    I-Cheng Tung, Hua Zhou, Qi Zhang & Haidan Wen

  2. Collaboratory of Advanced Computing and Simulations, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Aravind Krishnamoorthy, Rajiv K. Kalia, Priya Vashishta & Aiichiro Nakano

  3. Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Sridhar Sadasivam & Pierre Darancet

  4. Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Kyle L. Seyler, Genevieve Clark & Xiaodong Xu

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Ehren M. Mannebach & Aaron M. Lindenberg

  6. Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Clara Nyby

  7. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Friederike Ernst & Tony F. Heinz

  8. PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Friederike Ernst, Tony F. Heinz & Aaron M. Lindenberg

  9. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Diling Zhu, James M. Glownia, Michael E. Kozina, Sanghoon Song & Silke Nelson

  10. Department of Physics, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan

    Hiroyuki Kumazoe & Fuyuki Shimojo

  11. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Tony F. Heinz & Aaron M. Lindenberg

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Contributions

I.C.T., H.Z., Q.Z., K.S., E.M., C.N., F.E., D.Z., J.G., M.K., S.Song, S.N., T.H., X.X., A.L. and H.W. performed the experiments. A.K. H.K., F.S., R.K., R.V., A.N., S. Sadavisam and P.D. performed first-principles calculations. K.S., G.C. and X.X. made samples. I.C.T. and H.W. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors. H.W. and X.X. conceived this study.

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Correspondence to Haidan Wen.

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Tung, IC., Krishnamoorthy, A., Sadasivam, S. et al. Anisotropic structural dynamics of monolayer crystals revealed by femtosecond surface X-ray scattering. Nat. Photonics 13, 425–430 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0387-5

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