Dominik Lembke

Breakdown of High-Performance Monolayer MoS2 Transistors

Two-dimensional (2D) materials such as monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS(2)) are extremely interesting for integration in nanoelectronic devices where they represent the ultimate limit of miniaturization in the vertical direction. Thanks to the presence of a band gap and subnanometer thickness, monolayer MoS(2) can be used for the fabrication of transistors exhibiting extremely high on/off ratios and very low power dissipation. Here, we report on the development of 2D MoS(2) transistors with improved performance due to enhanced electrostatic control. Our devices show currents in the 100 μA/μm range and transconductance exceeding 20 μS/μm as well as current saturation. We also record electrical breakdown of our devices and find that MoS(2) can support very high current densities, exceeding the current-carrying capacity of copper by a factor of 50. Our results push the performance limit of MoS(2) and open the way to their use in low-power and low-cost analog and radio frequency circuits.

Optically active quantum dots in monolayer WSe2.

Semiconductor quantum dots have emerged as promising candidates for the implementation of quantum information processing, because they allow for a quantum interface between stationary spin qubits and propagating single photons. In the meantime, transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers have moved to the forefront of solid-state research due to their unique band structure featuring a large bandgap with degenerate valleys and non-zero Berry curvature. Here, we report the observation of zero-dimensional anharmonic quantum emitters, which we refer to as quantum dots, in monolayer tungsten diselenide, with an energy that is 20-100 meV lower than that of two-dimensional excitons. Photon antibunching in second-order photon correlations unequivocally demonstrates the zero-dimensional anharmonic nature of these quantum emitters. The strong anisotropic magnetic response of the spatially localized emission peaks strongly indicates that radiative recombination stems from localized excitons that inherit their electronic properties from the host transition-metal dichalcogenide. The large ∼1 meV zero-field splitting shows that the quantum dots have singlet ground states and an anisotropic confinement that is most probably induced by impurities or defects. The possibility of achieving electrical control in van der Waals heterostructures and to exploit the spin-valley degree of freedom renders transition-metal-dichalcogenide quantum dots interesting for quantum information processing.

Valley Zeeman effect in elementary optical excitations of monolayer WSe2

Charge carriers in transition metal dichalcogenides have an extra degree of freedom known as valley pseudospin, which is associated with the shape of the energy bands. Experiments show that this pseudospin can be manipulated using magnetic fields.