Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), such as tungsten disulfide (WS(2)), are layered materials with strong in-plane bonding and weak out-of-plane interactions enabling exfoliation into two-dimensional layers of single unit cell thickness. Recent advances in nanoscale materials characterization and few layer TMDCs' unique optical properties make them a research hot-spot in nonlinear optics. In this work, the nonlinear refractive index of monolayer WS(2) has been characterized with Z-scan measurement under 800nm femtosecond pulsed laser excitation, and a value of n2 ≃ (8.1 ± 0.41) × 10(-13)m(2)/W is obtained. A shift from saturable absorption to reverse saturable absorption was observed at higher input pump intensities in the experiments. The transition process was analyzed using a phenomenological model based on two photon absorption, and the two photon absorption coefficient was estimated about (3.7±0.28)×10(-6)m/W.
Van der Waals (vdWs) heterostructures based on in-plane isotropic/anisotropic 2D-layered semiconducting materials have recently received wide attention because of their unique interlayer coupling properties and hold a bright future as building blocks for advanced photodetectors. However, a fundamental understanding of charge behavior inside this kind of heterostructure in the photoexcited state remains elusive. In this work, we carry out a systematic investigation into the photoinduced interfacial charge behavior in type-II WS2/ReS2 vertical heterostructures via polarization-dependent pump–probe microscopy. Benefiting from the distinctive (ultrafast and anisotropic) charge-transfer mechanisms, the photodetector based on the WS2/ReS2 heterojunction displays more superior optoelectronic properties compared to its constituents with diverse functionalities including moderate photoresponsivity, polarization sensitivity, and fast photoresponse speed. Additionally, this device can function as a self-driven photodetector without the external bias. These results of our work tangibly corroborate the intriguing interlayer interaction in in-plane isotropic/anisotropic heterostructures and are expected to shed light on designing balanced-performance multifunctional optoelectrical devices.
Searching for ideal materials with strong effective optical nonlinear responses is a long-term task enabling remarkable breakthroughs in contemporary quantum and nonlinear optics. Polaritons, hybridized light-matter quasiparticles, are an appealing candidate to realize such nonlinearities. Here, we explore a class of peculiar polaritons, named plasmon–exciton polaritons (plexcitons), in a hybrid system composed of silver nanodisk arrays and monolayer tungsten-disulfide (WS2), which shows giant room-temperature nonlinearity due to their deep-subwavelength localized nature. Specifically, comprehensive ultrafast pump–probe measurements reveal that plexciton nonlinearity is dominated by the saturation and higher-order excitation-induced dephasing interactions, rather than the well-known exchange interaction in traditional microcavity polaritons. Furthermore, we demonstrate this giant nonlinearity can be exploited to manipulate the ultrafast nonlinear absorption properties of the solid-state system. Our findings suggest that plexcitons are intrinsically strongly interacting, thereby pioneering new horizons for practical implementations such as energy-efficient ultrafast all-optical switching and information processing.
The enhancement of terahertz (THz) radiation is of extreme significance for the realization of the THz probe and imaging. However, present THz technologies are far from being enough to realize high-performance and room-temperature THz sources. Fortunately, topological insulators (TIs), with spin-momentum-locked Dirac surface states, are expected to exhibit a high terahertz emission efficiency. In this work, the novel concept of a Rashba-state-enhanced spintronic THz emitter is demonstrated on the basis of ferromagnet/heavy metal/topological insulator (FM/HM/TI) heterostructure. We find that the THz emission intensity changes as a function of HM interlayer thickness, and a 1.98 times higher intensity compared to that of FM/TI can be achieved when a meticulously designed thickness of the HM layer is inserted. The improvement of terahertz radiation is ascribed to the additive effect of Rashba splitting and topological surface states at the HM/TI interface. These results offer new possibilities for realizing spintronic THz emitters in TI-based magnetic heterostructures.
Incorporating active materials into metamaterials is expected to yield exciting advancements in the unprecedented versatility of dynamically controlling optical properties, which sheds new light on the future optoelectronics. The exploration of emerging semiconductors into terahertz (THz) meta‐atoms potentially allows achieving ultrafast nanodevices driven by various applications, such as biomedical sensing/imaging, ultrawide‐band communications and security scanners. However, ultrafast optical switching of THz radiation is currently limited to a single level of tuning speed, which is a main hurdle to achieve multifunctionalities. Here, a hybrid metadevice which can realize the pump‐wavelength controlled ultrafast switching response by the functionalization of double photoactive layers is demonstrated experimentally. A whole cycle of electromagnetically induced transparency switching with a half‐recovery state changes from 0.78 ns to 8.8 ps as pump wavelength varies from near infrared to near ultraviolet regions. The observed pump‐color selective switching speed changing from nanosecond scale to picosecond scale is ascribed to the wavelength‐dependent penetration length of Ge and the contrasting defect states between noncrystalline Ge and epitaxial Si layers. It is believed that the schemes regarding pump‐color controllable ultrafast switching behavior introduced here can inspire more innovations across the field of ultrafast photonics and can boost the reconfigurable metamaterial applications.
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