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Lately rediscovered orthorhombic black phosphorus (BP) exhibits promising properties for near- and mid-infrared optoelectronics. Although recent electrical measurements indicate that a vertical electric field can effectively reduce its transport bandgap, the impact of the electric field on light-matter interaction remains unclear. Here we show that a vertical electric field can dynamically extend the photoresponse in a 5 nm-thick BP photodetector from 3.7 to beyond 7.7 μm, leveraging the Stark effect. We further demonstrate that such a widely tunable BP photodetector exhibits a peak extrinsic photo-responsivity of 518, 30, and 2.2 mA W−1 at 3.4, 5, and 7.7 μm, respectively, at 77 K. Furthermore, the extracted photo-carrier lifetime indicates a potential operational speed of 1.3 GHz. Our work not only demonstrates the potential of BP as an alternative mid-infrared material with broad optical tunability but also may enable the compact, integrated on-chip high-speed mid-infrared photodetectors, modulators, and spectrometers.

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We investigate band-gap tuning of bilayer graphene between hexagonal boron nitride sheets, by external electric fields. Using density functional theory, we show that the gap is continuously tunable from 0 to 0.2 eV, and is robust to stacking disorder. Moreover, boron nitride sheets do not alter the fundamental response from that of free-standing bilayer graphene, apart from additional screening. The calculations suggest that the graphene-boron nitride heterostructures could provide a viable route to graphene-based electronic devices.

Layered black phosphorus (BP) has attracted wide attention for mid-infrared photonics and high-speed electronics, due to its moderate band gap and high carrier mobility. However, its intrinsic band gap of around 0.33 electronvolt limits the operational wavelength range of BP photonic devices based on direct interband transitions to around 3.7 μm. In this work, we demonstrate that black arsenic phosphorus alloy (b-As P) formed by introducing arsenic into BP can significantly extend the operational wavelength range of photonic devices. The as-fabricated b-AsP photodetector sandwiched within hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) shows peak extrinsic responsivity of 190, 16, and 1.2 mA/W at 3.4, 5.0, and 7.7 μm at room temperature, respectively. Moreover, the intrinsic photoconductive effect dominates the photocurrent generation mechanism due to the preservation of pristine properties of b-AsP by complete hBN encapsulation, and these b-AsP photodetectors exhibit negligible transport hysteresis. The broad and large photoresponsivity within mid-infrared resulting from the intrinsic photoconduction, together with the excellent long-term air stability, makes b-AsP alloy a promising alternative material for mid-infrared applications, such as free-space communication, infrared imaging, and biomedical sensing.

Light-matter interaction at the atomic scale rules fundamental phenomena such as photoemission and lasing, while enabling basic everyday technologies, including photovoltaics and optical communications. In this context, plasmons -the collective electron oscillations in conducting materials-are important because they allow manipulating optical fields at the nanoscale. The advent of graphene and other two-dimensional crystals has pushed plasmons down to genuinely atomic dimensions, displaying appealing properties such as a large electrical tunability. However, plasmons in these materials are either too broad or lying at low frequencies, well below the technologically relevant nearinfrared regime. Here we demonstrate sharp near-infrared plasmons in lithographically-patterned wafer-scale atomically-thin silver crystalline films. Our measured optical spectra reveal narrow plasmons (quality factor ∼ 4), further supported by a low sheet resistance comparable to bulk metal in few-atomic-layer silver films down to seven Ag(111) monolayers. Good crystal quality and plasmon narrowness are obtained despite the addition of a thin passivating dielectric, which renders our samples resilient to ambient conditions. The observation of spectrally sharp and strongly confined plasmons in atomically thin silver holds great potential for electro-optical modulation and optical sensing applications. * These two authors contributed equally to the work. † Electronic address: enrique.ortega@ehu.es ‡ Electronic address: javier.garciadeabajo@icfo.es arXiv:1901.07739v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

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We present a real-space method for electronic-structure calculations of systems with general full or partial periodicity. The method is based on the self-consistent solution of the Kohn-Sham equations, using first principles pseudopotentials, on a uniform three-dimensional non-Cartesian grid. Its efficacy derives from the introduction of a new generalized high-order finite-difference method that avoids the numerical evaluation of mixed derivative terms and results in a simple yet accurate finite difference operator. Our method is further extended to systems where periodicity is enforced only along some directions ͑e.g., surfaces͒, by setting up the correct electrostatic boundary conditions and by properly accounting for the ion-electron and ion-ion interactions. Our method enjoys the main advantages of real-space grid techniques over traditional plane-wave representations for density functional calculations, namely, improved scaling and easier implementation on parallel computers, as well as inherent immunity to spurious interactions brought about by artificial periodicity. We demonstrate its capabilities on bulk GaAs and Na for the fully periodic case and on a monolayer of Si-adsorbed polar nitrobenzene molecules for the partially periodic case.