Electrically pumped single-defect light emitters in WSe2_2

Recent developments in fabrication of van der Waals heterostructures enable new type of devices assembled by stacking atomically thin layers of two-dimensional materials. Using this approach, we fabricate light-emitting devices based on a monolayer WSe$_2$, and also comprising boron nitride tunnelling barriers and graphene electrodes, and observe sharp luminescence spectra from individual defects in WSe$_2$ under both optical and electrical excitation. This paves the way towards the realization of electrically-pumped quantum emitters in atomically thin semiconductors. In addition we demonstrate tuning by more than 1 meV of the emission energy of the defect luminescence by applying a vertical electric field. This provides an estimate of the permanent electric dipole created by the corresponding electron-hole pair. The light-emitting devices investigated in our work can be assembled on a variety of substrates enabling a route to integration of electrically pumped single quantum emitters with existing technologies in nano-photonics and optoelectronics

Electrically pumped WSe2-based light-emitting van der Waals heterostructures embedded in monolithic dielectric microcavities

Vertical stacking of atomically thin layered materials opens new possibilities for the fabrication of heterostructures with favorable optoelectronic properties. The combination of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride and semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides allows fabrication of electroluminescence (EL) devices, compatible with a wide range of substrates. Here, we demonstrate a full integration of an electroluminescent van der Waals heterostructure in a monolithic optical microcavity made of two high reflectivity dielectric distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). Owing to the presence of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride protecting the WSe2 during the top mirror deposition, we fully preserve the optoelectronic behaviour of the device. Two bright cavity modes appear in the EL spectrum featuring Q-factors of 250 and 580 respectively: the first is attributed directly to the monolayer area, while the second is ascribed to the portion of emission guided outside the WSe2 island. By embedding the EL device inside the microcavity structure, a significant modification of the directionality of the emitted light is achieved, with the peak intensity increasing by nearly two orders of magnitude at the angle of the maximum emission compared with the same EL device without the top DBR. Furthermore, the coupling of the WSe2 EL to the cavity mode with a dispersion allows a tuning of the peak emission wavelength exceeding 35 nm (80 meV) by varying the angle at which the EL is observed from the microcavity. This work provides a route for the development of compact vertical-cavity surface-emitting devices based on van der Waals heterostructures

WSe2 Light-Emitting Tunneling Transistors with Enhanced Brightness at Room Temperature

Monolayers of molybdenum and tungsten dichalcogenides are direct bandgap semiconductors, which makes them promising for optoelectronic applications. In particular, van der Waals heterostructures consisting of monolayers of MoS2 sandwiched between atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and graphene electrodes allows one to obtain light emitting quantum wells (LEQWs) with low-temperature external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 1%. However, the EQE of MoS2- and MoSe2-based LEQWs shows behavior common for many other materials: it decreases fast from cryogenic conditions to room temperature, undermining their practical applications. Here we compare MoSe2 and WSe2 LEQWs. We show that the EQE of WSe2 devices grows with temperature, with room temperature EQE reaching 5%, which is 250× more than the previous best performance of MoS2 and MoSe2 quantum wells in ambient conditions. We attribute such different temperature dependences to the inverted sign of spin–orbit splitting of conduction band states in tungsten and molybdenum dichalcogenides, which makes the lowest-energy exciton in WSe2 dark

Photocatalytic fabrics based on reduced graphene oxide and TiO2 coatings

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mseb.2015.04.013The purpose of this work is to obtain photocatalytic fabrics based on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and TiO2 coatings on polyester fabrics. The influence of the applied number of RGO coatings on properties such as light absorption, conductivity, electroactivity and photocatalytic properties of the fabrics was established. An improvement of these properties with the number of RGO coatings applied was obtained. FESEM, EDX, XPS and FTIR-ATR showed the incorporation of the TiO2 nanoparticles on the fabrics. FTIR-ATR showed the formation of a bidentate carboxylic ligand with titanium atoms. The photocatalytic properties of the fabrics were tested with Rhodamine B dye solutions. Photocatalytic efficiency increased with the number of RGO coatings, due to the increased light absorption, and better electrical properties. The charge transfer resistance (Rct) and its time constant (τ) decreased, indicating a better electron transfer which helps to increase the lifetime of the pair electron/hole.Authors wish to thank to the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (contract CTM2011-23583) for the financial sup port. J. Molina is grateful to the Conselleria d’Educació, Formació i Ocupació (Generalitat Valenciana) for the Programa VALi+D Postdoctoral Fellowship. Electron Microscopy Service of the UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València) is gratefully acknowledged for help with FESEM and EDX characterization. Timothy Vickers is gratefully acknowledged for help with English revision.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio