Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Nat Mater. 2023 May;22(5):599-604. doi: 10.1038/s41563-023-01496-2. Epub 2023 Mar 9.
Excitons, Coulomb-bound electron-hole pairs, play a crucial role in both optical excitation and correlated phenomena in solids. When excitons interact with other quasiparticles, few- and many-body excited states can appear. Here we report an interaction between exciton and charges enabled by unusual quantum confinement in two-dimensional moiré superlattices, which results in many-body ground states composed of moiré excitons and correlated electron lattices. In an H-stacked (60-twisted) WS/WSe heterobilayer, we found an interlayer moiré exciton whose hole is surrounded by its partner electron's wavefunction distributed among three adjacent moiré traps. This three-dimensional excitonic structure enables large in-plane electrical quadrupole moments in addition to the vertical dipole. Upon doping, the quadrupole facilitates the binding of interlayer moiré excitons to the charges in neighbouring moiré cells, forming intercell charged exciton complexes. Our work provides a framework for understanding and engineering emergent exciton many-body states in correlated moiré charge orders.
激子,即束缚电子-空穴对,在固体中的光学激发和相关现象中起着至关重要的作用。当激子与其他准粒子相互作用时,可能会出现少体和多体激发态。在这里,我们报告了在二维摩尔超晶格中异常量子限制所实现的激子与电荷之间的相互作用,这导致了由摩尔激子和相关电子晶格组成的多体基态。在 H 堆叠(60 度扭曲)WS/WSe 异质双层中,我们发现了一个层间摩尔激子,其空穴被其伙伴电子的波函数所环绕,该波函数分布在三个相邻的摩尔陷阱中。这种三维激子结构除了垂直偶极矩之外,还具有大的面内电四极矩。掺杂后,四极矩有利于层间摩尔激子与相邻摩尔单元中的电荷结合,形成单元间带电激子复合物。我们的工作为理解和设计关联的摩尔电荷有序中的新兴激子多体态提供了一个框架。