Ultrafast Imaging of Energy and Charge Transfer at Nanoscale Interfaces

 The interaction of light with semiconductors provides essential insight into their electronic and photonic properties. Excitons, excited electron-hole pairs, determine the optical response of nanomaterials and act as nanoscale energy carriers, making excitonic materials excellent candidates for optoelectronic, photovoltaic, and quantum devices. Unique phenomena can be brought about by using excitonic materials as building blocks in designing new systems and taking advantage of excitons’ dimensionality. For example, growing quantum dots into highly ordered arrays enhances exciton transport due to the strong dipolar coupling between excitons. Alternatively, forming vertical heterostructures between monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides introduces moiré superlattices, which localize the excitons introducing nonlinear interactions that be exploited for quantum information processing. Understanding these complex excitonic systems requires experimental tools capable of high spatial and temporal resolutions. This thesis aims to contribute to understanding the complex excitons and charges formed at nanoscale interfaces with ultrafast techniques. In the discussed work, we take advantage of the 100s of fs time resolution and 10s of nm spatial precision to visualize exciton migration and dynamics associated with complex excitonic systems. First, we introduce the optical techniques needed to help us understand the fundamental photophysics of the studied systems (Chapter 2). Next, we provide an example of how we can use these methods to understand exciton coherence in perovskite quantum dot solids exhibiting superradiance (Chapter 3) and enhanced exciton transport (Chapter 4) due to low disorder and strong dipolar coupling. We also characterize and explore the behavior of highly excited excitons, Rydberg states, in transition metal dichalcogenides (Chapter 5). Then, we examine the properties of heterostructures formed between two monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides exhibiting moiré superlattices and investigate the nonlinear exciton-exciton interactions modulated by the moiré potentials (Chapter 6). We also explore charge carrier behavior at interfaces of two different excitonic materials in molybdenum disulfide-single-wall carbon nanotube heterojunctions containing one- and two-dimensional excitons (Chapter 7). Finally, we visualize and quantify charge carrier migration across an alloyed cadmium sulfide and cadmium selenide lateral heterojunction (Chapter 8). We hope to give the reader a better understanding of these complex systems and open up new possibilities for their efficient use through the results presented in this thesis. </p

Hyperspectral imaging of exciton confinement within a moiré unit cell with a subnanometer electron probe

Electronic and optical excitations in two-dimensional systems are distinctly sensitive to the presence of a moiré superlattice. We used cryogenic transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopy to simultaneously image the structural reconstruction and associated localization of the lowest-energy intralayer exciton in a rotationally aligned WS2-WSe2 moiré superlattice. In conjunction with optical spectroscopy and ab initio calculations, we determined that the exciton center-of-mass wave function is confined to a radius of approximately 2 nanometers around the highest-energy stacking site in the moiré unit cell. Our results provide direct evidence that atomic reconstructions lead to the strongly confining moiré potentials and that engineering strain at the nanoscale will enable new types of excitonic lattices

Superradiance and Exciton Delocalization in Perovskite Quantum Dot Superlattices

Achieving superradiance in solids is challenging due to fast dephasing processes from inherent disorder and thermal fluctuations. Perovskite quantum dots (QDs) are an exciting class of exciton emitters with large oscillator strength and high quantum efficiency, making them promising for solid-state superradiance. However, a thorough understanding of the competition between coherence and dephasing from phonon scattering and energetic disorder is currently unavailable. Here, we present an investigation of exciton coherence in perovskite QD solids using temperature-dependent photoluminescence line width and lifetime measurements. Our results demonstrate that excitons are coherently delocalized over 3 QDs at 11 K in superlattices leading to superradiant emission. Scattering from optical phonons leads to the loss of coherence and exciton localization to a single QD at temperatures above 100 K. At low temperatures, static disorder and defects limit exciton coherence. These results highlight the promise and challenge in achieving coherence in perovskite QD solids

Fermi Pressure and Coulomb Repulsion Driven Rapid Hot Plasma Expansion in a van der Waals Heterostructure

Transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures provide a versatile platform to explore electronic and excitonic phases. As the excitation density exceeds the critical Mott density, interlayer excitons are ionized into an electron-hole plasma phase. The transport of the highly non-equilibrium plasma is relevant for high-power optoelectronic devices but has not been carefully investigated previously. Here, we employ spatially resolved pump-probe microscopy to investigate the spatial-temporal dynamics of interlayer excitons and hot-plasma phase in a MoSe2/WSe2 twisted bilayer. At the excitation density of ∼1014 cm-2, well exceeding the Mott density, we find a surprisingly rapid initial expansion of hot plasma to a few microns away from the excitation source within ∼0.2 ps. Microscopic theory reveals that this rapid expansion is mainly driven by Fermi pressure and Coulomb repulsion, while the hot carrier effect has only a minor effect in the plasma phase