WS2 flakes were prepared on template-stripped ultra-flat Au and Ag layers using a metal-assisted exfoliation technique, and their physical characteristics were investigated. The identification of the thickness for each flake is confirmed by the agreement between the measured and calculated optical reflectance spectra. Despite the extremely small flake thickness, the resonant cavity modes can appear in WS2/Au and WS2/Ag, according to the anticipated phase shifts of light. The contact potential difference of the flake was studied using Kelvin probe force microscopy to propose the interfacial band alignment. This work can provide valuable insights into the use of the 2D-semiconductor/metal structures for optoelectronic device applications.
WS2 multilayer flakes were prepared on template-stripped ultra-flat Ag layers using a metal-assisted exfoliation technique. Using a shadow mask consisting of holey carbon films, 2-micron-sized Au top electrodes were evaporated on the WS2 flakes to fabricate vertical Au/WS2/Ag devices. The photovoltaic characterization of the devices indicated the formation of Schottky diodes, and the estimated power conversion efficiency at 625-nm visible light was as high as 5.0%. Moreover, our Au/WS2/Ag devices exhibited broadband and incident-angle-insensitive absorption capability. The lithography-free processes suggested in this work enabled us to fabricate high-yield and high-performance devices.
We fabricated hybrid nanostructures consisting of MoS2 monolayers and plasmonic Au nanogratings. The polarization dependence of optical reflectivity showed a clear feature of surface plasmon polariton excitation. The MoS2 monolayers on Au nanogratings exhibited significantly enhanced photoluminescence intensity, compared with those on flat SiO2/Si substrates and Au thin films. Polarization-dependent surface photovoltage mapping was also obtained by Kelvin-probe force microscopy to study the exciton-plasmon coupling in the samples. In this presentation, we will discuss the interplay among photons, excitons, and surface plasmons in the MoS2-metal nanostructures.
We fabricated stand-alone trilayers (3L) and their heterostructures of MoS2 and WS2 on Al2O3 substrates. In particular, two kinds of heterostructures with different stacking sequences (i.e., 3L-MoS2/3L-WS2 and 3L-WS2/3L-MoS2) were prepared for comparison. The light-induced surface potential change suggested that the internal electric field along the thickness direction was present in the stand-alone (MoS2 and WS2) and heterostructure samples. Relative peak shifts of the Raman spectra supported the presence of the internal field in our samples. Physical origins to induce the internal electric field will be discussed in the presentation.
We fabricated MoS2-Au hybrid nanostructures using nanosphere lithography and investigated their photoluminescence (PL) characteristics. Arrays of Au nanotriangles (NTs) and nanoholes (NHs) were fabricated for comparison. MoS2 monolayers on both NT and NH arrays exhibited enhanced PL intensity, compared with those on SiO2/Si substrates and flat Au thin films. Numerical simulations revealed clear distinction in the electric field intensity distributions in the NT and NH arrays at the PL excitation wavelength. Such difference could be attributed to the excitation of localized and propagating surface plasmon in the NT and NH arrays. This work helps us to understand how the plasmonic NT and NH arrays affect the physical properties of the MoS2 monolayers on them.
The coupling between surface plasmons (SPs) and excitons in 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials has been attracted growing research attention in recent days. Strong electric field confinement and absorption enhancement could be expected, as a result of the SP-excition couping. We prepared exfoliated flakes of MoS2, a representative TMD material, on Au nanogratings fabricated by electron beam lithography. We studied influences of propagating SP on optical properties of the MoS2 flakes on the Au nanogratings, based on both experimental measurements and numerical calculations. Local surface potential maps of the samples suggested that the strain states in the MoS2 flakes and the dipoles formed at the MoS2/ Au interface could cause spatial modulation of the bandgap energies of the MoS2 flakes. The surface potential measurements were carried out using Kelvin probe force microscopy in dark and under TM/TE-mode light illumination. Band diagrams of the MoS2/Au nanogratings were proposed to explain all the experimental results. This study can help us to understand and control the physical characteristics of the TMD/metal nanostructures.
MoS2, a representative 2D atomically thin semiconductor, has a sizable band gap leading to intensive research efforts to investigate its unique optical properties and realize a novel optoelectronic device based on MoS2. However, limited optical absorption in extremely thin MoS2 layers is an obstacle for high-efficiency light absorbing devices. In this work, we investigated how reflection and transmission phase-shift at the highly absorbing MoS2 interface could affect the absorption spectra of the MoS2 monolayers on SiO2/Si substrates (SiO2 thickness: 40 ~ 130 nm). Such interface-phase-shift gave rise to interference in MoS2 layer, although the layer thickness was only 0.7 nm, much smaller than the wavelength of the visible light. We compared measured and calculated optical reflection spectra, which showed that aforementioned interface-interference enhanced optical absorption in MoS2 monolayers. Raman intensity of MoS2 monolayers largely varied depending on the SiO2 thickness, which could be well explained by the calculated absorption in MoS2 layers. In addition, the interface-interference enabled omnidirectional absorption enhancement. This work showed that proper choice of the SiO2 thickness could provide us a simple and useful means to improve optical absorption in MoS2 monolayers.
MoS2 and WS2 trilayers were grown on p-type Si wafers using atmospheric pressure plasma processes. Current-voltage measurements of MoS2/Si and WS2/Si heterojunctions showed rectifying behaviors, indicating formation of diodes. It should be noted that the very large shunt resistance indicated uniform MoS2 layer formation on the Si wafers. Relatively large dark current of the MoS2 and WS2 heterojunctions under reverse bias indicated the band to band tunneling and avalanche multiplication processes. Temperature dependence of the diode ideality factor was also studied to reveal the major recombination processes, based on conventional 3D semiconductor models. Photocurrent characteristics of the junctions were studied using green lasers (wavelength: 532 nm). Large photocurrent was observed under reverse bias, whereas photocurrent was negligibly small under forward bias. The measured photocurrent was linearly proportional to the laser power. This suggested that trapping and detrapping of the photo-generated carriers at interface defects and surface adsorbates did not much limit the collection of photo-carriers. Both MoS2/Si and WS2/Si heterojunctions showed fast photoresponse: the rising and decaying time constants were less than 0.1 ms. All these results showed that our processes could prepare high quality 2D/3D hybrid semiconductor heterojunctions with clean interfaces.
Understanding the band alignment at metal/2D semiconductor (SC) contacts is essential for electrical characterizations of 2D SC materials and for fabrication of high performance 2D SC devices. Many researchers have attempted to understand the electrical properties of metal/2D SC contacts and have revealed that they have unique features distinct from those of 3D SC counterparts. In this work, we investigated the surface potential (Vsurf) of exfoliated MoS2 flakes on bare and Au-coated SiO2/Si substrates using Kelvin probe force microscopy. The Vsurf of MoS2 single layers was larger on the Au-coated substrates than on the bare substrates; our theoretical calculations indicate that this may be caused by the formation of a larger electric dipole at the MoS2/Au interface leading to a modified band alignment. Vsurf decreased as the thickness of the flakes increased until reaching the bulk value at a thickness of ~20 nm on the bare and ~80 nm on the Au-coated substrates, respectively. This thickness-dependence of Vsurf was attributed to electrostatic screening in the MoS2 layers. Thus, a difference in the thickness at which the bulk Vsurf appeared suggests that the underlying substrate has an effect on the electric-field screening length of the MoS2 flakes. This work provides important insights to understand the band alignment and the charge transport at the metal/2D SC interfaces.
ZnO has attracted growing research attention as a strong candidate material for various optoelectronic device applications. It is important to understand and control the interactions between surface plasmons (SPs) and charge carriers in metal-ZnO hybrid nanostructures to improve the optical characteristics. In this work, we fabricated ZnO/Ag nanogratings using patterned polymer and Si templates. Excitation of the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) well explained the optical reflectance and photoluminescence spectra of the ZnO/Ag nanogratings [1,2]. Nanoscopic mapping of surface photovoltage (SPV), i.e., changes in the surface potential under illumination, obtained by Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) enabled us to investigate the local behaviors of the photo-generated carriers. The magnitude and relaxation time of the measured SPV depended on the wavelength and polarization of the incident light [3]. This showed that the SP excitation in the nanogratings directly affected the creation and recombination processes of the charge carriers. All of these results suggested that SPV measurements using KPFM should be very useful for studying the SP effects in metal/semiconductor hybrid nanostructures.
References
[1] Gwon et al., Opt. Express 19, 5895 (2011).
[2] Gwon et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 6, 8602 (2014).
[3] Gwon et al., Sci. Rep. 5, 16727; doi: 10.1038/srep16727 (2015).
We fabricated Si nanopillar (NP) arrays using e-beam lithography and coated them with poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) organic semiconductor layers. Optical reflection spectra showed that Mie resonance significantly increased the scattering cross-sections of the NPs and strongly concentrated incident light in the NPs. Such concentrated light should produce numerous charge carriers and affect the subsequent drift/diffusion of the carriers. Surface photovoltage (SPV), defined as the difference of the surface potential in dark and under light, could reveal the formation and separation of the photo-generated carriers. Especially, Kelvin probe force microscopy technique allowed us to obtain real space SPV maps with nanoscopic spatial resolution. The SPV values at the NP tops were much larger than those at the flat regions around the NPs. This study would provide us insights into improving performance of organic/inorganic hybrid nanostructure-based devices.
Recently, extraordinary physical properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted great attention for various device applications, including photodetectors, field effect transistors, and chemical sensors. There have been intensive research efforts to grow high-quality and large area TMD thin films, and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques enable scalable growth of layered MoS2 films. We investigated the roles of Au nanoparticles (NPs) on the transport and photoresponse of the CVD-grown MoS2 thin films. The Au NPs increased conductivity and enabled fast photoresponse of MoS2 thin films. These results showed that decoration of metal NPs were useful means to tailor the physical properties of CVD-grown MoS2 thin films. To clarify the roles of the metal particles, we compared the transport characteristics of MoS2 thin films with and without the Au NPs in different gas ambient conditions (N2, O2, and H2/N2). The ambient-dependence of the MoS2 thin films allowed us to discuss possible scenarios to explain our results based on considerations of band bending near the Au NPs, gas adsorption/desorption and subsequent charge transfer, and charge scattering/trapping by defect states.
We investigated optical properties of planar Si wafers and Si microwire (MW) arrays with and without ZnO thin films using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Reflectance of the MW array (diameter: 4 μm and period: 12 μm) was smaller than that of the planar wafer in the wavelength range from 400 to 1100 nm, which could be originated from antireflection effects due to low optical density and guided-mode-assisted field enhancement. The reflectance of ZnO (thickness: 50 and 80 nm)-coated MW array was drastically reduced compared with the bare array but somewhat larger than that of the coated planar wafer. This could be attributed to less-confined guided modes in the wires, which was supported by the field distribution simulation results. Our results provide some insights into possible roles of transparent conducting layers on MW arrays for photovoltaic applications.
We investigated optical properties of several 2D arrangements of Au nanoparticles (NPs), including dimer, trimer,
hexamer, and heptamer, using finite-difference time-domain method. The heptamerous system, consisting of a central
NP and six NPs forming a hexagonal shape, exhibited Fano resonance. We found that the intensity and position of the
Fano resonance peak depended on the size of the central NP and its distance from the other six NPs. Furthermore we
studied 3D configurations, where the location of the central NP was moved along the perpendicular direction to the plane
containing the other NPs. Such vertical displacement of the central NP influenced the plasmonic coupling between NPs
and affected the extinction spectra. Such 3D NP systems could provide us alternative approaches to tune the optical
properties of the plasmonic NPs.
We have investigated optical characteristics of silicon nanowire (Si NW) on Al disk arrays using the finite-difference
time-domain (FDTD) simulations. Without the Al disk, the Si NW arrays alone exhibit strong absorption peaks,
originated from guided mode resonance. The arrays of SiNW with Al disk possess additional broad peaks, at slightly
larger wavelengths than those of the resonant guided mode peaks. The FDTD simulations show formation of
concentrated electromagnetic field at the Si NW/Al interface, indicating excitation of localized surface plasmons. These
results suggest that bottom-contact electrodes can work as means to enhance the optical absorption of the Si NWs as well
as to collect carriers in Si NW-based optoelectronic devices.
We investigated the optical properties of ZnO/Ag grating structures, with the periods of 1000 and 1400 nm, fabricated by
sputtering and nanoimprint lithography. The grating structures exhibited multiple peak features in visible-range
photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Whereas a ZnO/Ag planar thin film showed two broad PL peaks in UV and visible
region. Moreover, the PL intensity of the periodic structures was ~100 times larger than that of the planar counterpart.
Several reflectance dips in the visible range were seen only in the grating structures, which could be caused by photoninduced
surface plasmon polariton (SPP) excitation via the grating coupling. The PL peaks well matched with the
reflectance dips. This represented that the PL enhancement should be originated from the SPP excitation. The finitedifference
time-domain simulations also supported the plasmonic effects in the periodic structures.
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