Whisper Gallery Modes in Monolayer Tungsten Disulfide-Hexagonal Boron Nitride Optical Cavity

Abstract

There are strong interests in constructing nanolasers using two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) due to their strong light–matter interactions and high optical gain. However, most cavity designs based on transfer of exfoliated TMDs on silicon oxide are not optimized since monolayer emitters are located far from where the photonic mode reaches maximum intensity. By taking advantage of the excellent dielectric properties of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), we design a new microdisk optical cavity fabricated from a van der Waals (VdW) stacked h-BN/WS₂/h-BN. The heterostructure is patterned into microdisk cavities characterized by whispering gallery modes (WGMs). The emission intensity of the WS₂ trion is enhanced by 2.9 times that of exciton in the heterostructure, giving rise to whisper gallery modes with resonance intensities that show nonlinear power dependence. A Rayleigh scatterer directs the cavity emission to vertical collection. Such VdW heterostructure provides an atomically smooth interface that is ideal for low loss photon propagation, giving a <i>Q</i> factor of 1200