Atomically thin mirrors made of monolayer semiconductors

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers are promising candidates for exploring new electronic and optical phenomena and for realizing atomically thin optoelectronic devices. They host tightly bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) that can be efficiently excited by resonant light fields. Here, we demonstrate that a single monolayer of molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) can dramatically modify light transmission near the excitonic resonance, acting as an electrically switchable mirror that reflects up to 85% of incident light at cryogenic temperatures. This high reflectance is a direct consequence of the excellent coherence properties of excitons in this atomically thin semiconductor, encapsulated by hexagonal boron nitride. Furthermore, we show that the MoSe2 monolayer exhibits power- and wavelength-dependent nonlinearities that stem from exciton-based lattice heating in the case of continuous-wave excitation and exciton-exciton interactions when fast, pulsed laser excitation is used. These observations open up new possibilities for studying quantum nonlinear optical phenomena and topological photonics, and for miniaturizing optical devices.

4 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Boron nitride substrates for high-quality graphene electronics
• Quantum nature of a strongly-coupled single quantum dot-cavity system
• Measurement of the optical dielectric function of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers: MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2
• Single-Photon Switching and Entanglement of Solid-State Qubits in an Integrated Nanophotonic System
• Fast pick up technique for high quality heterostructures of bilayer graphene and hexagonal boron nitride
• Cooperative resonances in light scattering from two-dimensional atomic arrays
• Exciton-exciton interaction in transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers
• Three-particle Complexes in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors
• Extremely low inhomogeneous broadening of exciton lines in shallow (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum wells
• Many-body effects in nonlinear optical responses of 2D layered semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Frequency-Dependent Reflectors
• Nonlinear optical response of a two-dimensional quantum-dot supercrystal: Emerging multistability, periodic and aperiodic self-oscillations, chaos, and transient chaos
• Wigner Crystals in Two-Dimensional Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides: Spin Physics and Readout
• Electrically controlled emission from triplet charged excitons in atomically thin heterostructures