Interplay of Trapped Species and Absence of Electron Capture in Moiré Heterobilayers

Nano Lett. 2023 Jul 12;23(13):5989-5994. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01177. Epub 2023 Jun 23.

Abstract

Moiré heterobilayers host interlayer excitons in a natural, periodic array of trapping potentials. Recent work has elucidated the structure of the trapped interlayer excitons and the nature of photoluminescence (PL) from trapped and itinerant charged complexes such as interlayer trions in these structures. In this paper, our results serve to add to the understanding of the nature of PL emission and explain its characteristic blueshift with increasing carrier density, along with demonstrating a significant difference between the interlayer exciton-trion conversion efficiency as compared to both localized and itinerant intralayer species in conventional monolayers. Our results show the absence of optical generation of trions in these materials, which we suggest arises from the highly localized, near subnanometer confinement of trapped species in these Moiré potentials.

Keywords: 2D materials; Moiré superlattice; interlayer excitons; optoelectronics.