Interlayer Exciton Diode and Transistor

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates unidirectional flow and optical control of interlayer excitons in a heterostructure, achieving high-speed exciton transport and introducing an excitonic transistor for low-loss excitonic circuits.

Contribution

It reports the first unidirectional exciton transport along nanoscale channels and the realization of an optically gated excitonic transistor in van der Waals heterostructures.

Findings

High drift velocity of excitons up to 2×10^6 cm/s

Unidirectional exciton transport enabled by lithographic patterning

Optical gating of exciton flow demonstrating transistor functionality

Abstract

Controlling the flow of charge neutral interlayer exciton (IX) quasiparticles can potentially lead to low loss excitonic circuits. Here, we report unidirectional transport of IXs along nanoscale electrostatically defined channels in an MoSe$_2$-WSe$_2$ heterostructure. These results are enabled by a lithographically defined triangular etch in a graphene gate to create a potential energy ''slide''. By performing spatially and temporally resolved photoluminescence measurements, we measure smoothly varying IX energy along the structure and high-speed exciton flow with a drift velocity up to 2 * 10$^6$ cm/s, an order of magnitude larger than previous experiments. Furthermore, exciton flow can be controlled by saturating exciton population in the channel using a second laser pulse, demonstrating an optically gated excitonic transistor. Our work paves the way towards low loss excitonic circuits, the study of bosonic transport in one-dimensional channels, and custom potential energy landscapes for excitons in van der Waals heterostructures.