Inhibited nonradiative decay at all exciton densities in monolayer semiconductors

Abstract

Straining for high photoluminescence The photoluminescence quantum yield in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides generally drops at high emission intensities because the excitons undergo nonradiative annihilation. Kim et al. show that this process is resonantly amplified in these materials by van Hove singularities in their joint density of states. However, application of small mechanical strains (∼0.5%) shifted the van Hove singularities and suppressed the nonradiative processes. Near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield at high exciton densities was seen in exfoliated monolayers of molybdenum sulfide, tungsten sulfide, and tungsten selenide, as well as centimeter-scale tungsten sulfide monolayers grown by chemical vapor deposition. Science , abi9193, this issue p. 448