Enhanced Light-Matter Interaction in Graphene/h-BN van der Waals Heterostructures

Abstract

By investigating the optoelectronic properties of prototypical graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) heterostructures, we demonstrate how a nanostructured combination of these materials can lead to a dramatic enhancement of light-matter interaction and give rise to unique excitations. In the framework of ab initio many-body perturbation theory, we show that such heterostructures absorb light over a broad frequency range, from the near-infrared to the ultraviolet (UV), and that each spectral region is characterized by a specific type of excitations. Delocalized electron-hole pairs in graphene dominate the low-energy part of the spectrum, while strongly bound electron-hole pairs in h-BN are preserved in the near-UV. Besides these features, characteristic of the pristine constituents, charge-transfer excitations appear across the visible region. Remarkably, the spatial distribution of the electron and the hole can be selectively tuned by modulating the stacking arrangement of the individual building blocks. Our results open up unprecedented perspectives in view of designing van der Waals heterostructures with tailored optoelectronic features.

References in corpus (46)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Van der Waals heterostructures
• Boron nitride substrates for high-quality graphene electronics
• Field-effect tunneling transistor based on vertical graphene heterostructures
• Ultrafast Charge Transfer in Atomically Thin MoS2/WS2 Heterostructures
• Measurement of the Optical Conductivity of Graphene
• Observation of Long-Lived Interlayer Excitons in Monolayer MoSe2-WSe2 Heterostructures
• Light-emitting diodes by bandstructure engineering in van der Waals heterostructures
• Micrometer-scale ballistic transport in encapsulated graphene at room temperature
• Substrate-induced bandgap in graphene on hexagonal boron nitride
• Cloning of Dirac fermions in graphene superlattices
• STM Spectroscopy of ultra-flat graphene on hexagonal boron nitride
• Emergence of Superlattice Dirac Points in Graphene on Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Strong interlayer coupling in van der Waals heterostructures built from single-layer chalcogenides
• Highly confined low-loss plasmons in graphene-boron nitride heterostructures
• Colloquium: The transport properties of graphene: An introduction
• Commensurate-incommensurate transition for graphene on hexagonal boron nitride
• Atomically thin boron nitride: a tunnelling barrier for graphene devices
• Renormalization of Molecular Electronic Levels at Metal-Molecule Interfaces
• Excitonic Effects on the Optical Response of Graphene and Bilayer Graphene
• Twist-controlled resonant tunnelling in graphene-boron nitride-graphene heterostructures
• Huge excitonic effects in layered hexagonal boron nitride
• Adhesion and electronic structure of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride substrates
• Generic Miniband Structure of Graphene on a Hexagonal Substrate
• Excitons in van der Waals heterostructures: The important role of dielectric screening
• Tunable band gaps in bilayer graphene-BN heterostructures
• Quasiparticle bandgap engineering of graphene and graphone on hexagonal boron nitride substrate
• Linear plasmon dispersion in single-wall carbon nanotubes and the collective excitation spectrum of graphene
• Interlayer excitons and Band Alignment in MoS${}_2$/hBN/WSe${}_2$ van der Waals Heterostructures
• Quasiparticle GW calculations for solids, molecules and 2D materials
• Observation of an intrinsic bandgap and Landau level renormalization in graphene/boron-nitride heterostructures
• Moir{é} patterns as a probe of interplanar interactions: graphene on h-BN
• Excitons and stacking order in h-BN
• Effect of structural relaxation on the electronic structure of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride
• Accurate all-electron $G_0{W}_0$ quasiparticle energies employing the full-potential augmented planewave method
• Graphene on Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• High-energy excitonic effects in graphite and graphene
• Moire superlattice effects in graphene/boron-nitride van der Waals heterostructures
• Electronic structure of spontaneously strained graphene on hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Speeding up the solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation by a double-grid method and Wannier interpolation
• Heterostructure bilayer graphene-hBN: Interplay between misalignment, interlayer asymmetry, and trigonal warping
• First-principles study of excitonic effects in Raman intensities
• Anisotropic excitonic effects in the energy loss function of hexagonal boron nitride
• Band renormalization of a polymer physisorbed on graphene investigated by many-body perturbation theory
• Moiré minibands in graphene heterostructures with almost commensurate sqrt3 x sqrt3 hexagonal crystals
• Infrared absorption by graphene-hBN heterostructures

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Emergence of Frohlich polaron from interlayer electron-phonon coupling in van der Waals heterostructure
• Electronic and optical excitations of two-dimensional ZrS${}_2$ and HfS${}_2$ and their heterostructure
• Dimensionality of excitons in stacked van der Waals materials: The example of hexagonal boron nitride
• First-principles many-body study of the electronic and optical properties of CsK2Sb, a semiconducting material for ultra-bright electron sources
• MoTe2 as a natural hyperbolic material across the visible and the ultraviolet region
• Electronic structure and optical properties of Na${}_2$KSb and NaK${}_2$Sb from first-principles many-body theory
• Structural, electronic, and optical properties of periodic graphene/h-BN van der Waals heterostructures
• Formation of Near-IR Excitons in Low Dimensional CuSbS${}_2$