Temperature dependent moir\'e trapping of interlayer excitons in MoSe2-WSe2 heterostructures

TL;DR

This study investigates how temperature affects interlayer excitons in MoSe2-WSe2 heterostructures, revealing a transition from localized to delocalized states and an inverse relationship between PL energy and transition temperature.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of temperature, excitation power, and time-dependent photoluminescence, highlighting the role of moiré potential trapping and IX-IX exchange interactions.

Findings

PL intensity decreases above a certain temperature

Inverse relationship between PL energy and transition temperature

Different power-dependent behaviors for 0° and 60° twist angles

Abstract

MoSe2-WSe2 heterostructures host strongly bound interlayer excitons (IXs) which exhibit bright photoluminescence (PL) when the twist-angle is near 0{\deg} or 60{\deg}. Over the past several years, there have been numerous reports on the optical response of these heterostructures but no unifying model to understand the dynamics of IXs and their temperature dependence. Here, we perform a comprehensive study of the temperature, excitation power, and time-dependent PL of IXs. We observe a significant decrease in PL intensity above a transition temperature that we attribute to a transition from localized to delocalized IXs. Astoundingly, we find a simple inverse relationship between the IX PL energy and the transition temperature, which exhibits opposite power dependent behaviors for near 0{\deg} and 60{\deg} samples. We conclude that this temperature dependence is a result of IX-IX exchange interactions, whose effect is suppressed by the moir\'e potential trapping IXs at low temperature.