Pressure dependence of intra- and interlayer excitons in 2H-MoS$_2$ bilayers

TL;DR

This study investigates how applying pressure affects the optical excitons in bilayer MoS$_2$, revealing that interlayer interactions and exciton energies are significantly tunable through pressure, with effects influenced by the bilayer's adhesion to the diamond anvil.

Contribution

It provides experimental and theoretical insights into pressure-induced changes in excitonic properties of MoS$_2$ bilayers, highlighting the role of adhesion effects and real-space exciton distributions.

Findings

Pressure decreases the energy splitting between A and interlayer excitons.

Adhesion to the diamond reduces in-plane compression effects.

Distinct pressure responses are due to different real-space exciton distributions.

Abstract

The optical and electronic properties of multilayer transition metal dichalcogenides differ significantly from their monolayer counterparts due to interlayer interactions. The separation of individual layers can be tuned in a controlled way by applying pressure. Here, we use a diamond anvil cell to compress bilayers of 2H-MoS$_2$ in the gigapascal range. By measuring optical transmission spectra, we find that increasing pressure leads to a decrease in the energy splitting between the A and interlayer exciton. Comparing our experimental findings with ab initio calculations, we conclude that the observed changes are not due to the commonly assumed hydrostatic compression. This effect is attributed to the MoS$_2$ bilayer adhering to the diamond, which reduces in-plane compression. Moreover, we demonstrate that the distinct real-space distributions and resulting contributions from the valence band account for the different pressure dependencies of the inter- and intralayer excitons in compressed MoS$_2$ bilayers.