Electrically-driven ultrafast out-of-equilibrium light emission from hot electrons in suspended graphene/hBN heterostructures

Nanoscale light sources with high speed of electrical modulation and low energy consumption are key components for nanophotonics and optoelectronics.The record-high carrier mobility and ultrafast carrier dynamics of graphene make it promising as an atomically thin light emitter which can be further integrated into arbitrary platforms by van der Waals forces.However,due to the zero bandgap,graphene is difficult to emit light through the interband recombination of carriers like conventional semiconductors.Here,we demonstrate ultrafast thermal light emitters based on suspended graphene/hexagonal boron nitride(Gr/hBN)heterostructures.Electrons in biased graphene are significantly heated up to 2800 K at modest electric fields,emitting bright photons from the near-infrared to the visible spectral range.By eliminating the heat dissipation channel of the substrate,the radiation efficiency of the suspended Gr/hBN device is about two orders of magnitude greater than that of graphene devices supported on SiO2or hBN.Wefurther demonstrate that hot electrons and low-energy acoustic phonons in graphene are weakly coupled to each other and are not in full thermal equilibrium.Direct cooling ofhigh-temperature hot electrons to low-temperature acoustic phonons is enabled by the significant near-field heat transfer at the highly localized Gr/hBN interface,resulting in ultrafast thermal emission with up to 1 GHz bandwidth under electrical excitation.It is found thatsuspending the Gr/hBN heterostructures on the SiO2trenches significantly modifies the light emission due to the formation of the optical cavity and showed a~440%enhancement inintensity at the peak wavelength of 940 nm compared to the black-body thermal radiation.The demonstration of electrically driven ultrafast light emission from suspended Gr/hBNheterostructures sheds the light on applications of graphene heterostructures in photonicintegrated circuits,such as broadband light sources and ultrafast thermo-optic phase modulators.

Gate tunable spatial accumulation of valley-spin in chemical vapor deposition grown 40°-twisted bilayer WS2

The emerging two-dimensional materials,particularly transition metal dichalcogenides(TMDs),are known to exhibit valley degree of freedom with long valley lifetime,which hold great promises in the implementation of valleytronic devices.Especially,light-valley interactions have attracted attentions in these systems,as the electrical generation of valley magnetization can be readily achieved—a rather different route toward magnetoelectric(ME)effect as compared to that from conventional electron spins.However,so far,the moiré patterns constructed with twisted bilayer TMDs remain largely unexplored in regard of their valley spin polarizations,even though the symmetry might be distinct from the AB stacked bilayer TMDs.Here,we study the valley Hall effect(VHE)in 40°-twisted chemical vapor deposition(CVD)grown WS2moiré transistors,using optical Kerr rotation measurements at 20 K.We observe a clear gate tunable spatial distribution of the valley carrier imbalance induced by the VHE when a current is exerted in the system.

Thermionic electron emission in the 1D edge-to-edge limit

Thermionic emission is a tunneling phenomenon,which depicts that electrons on the surface of a conductor can be pulled out into the vacuum when they are subjected to high electrical tensions while being heated hot enough to overtake their work functions.This principle has led to the great success of the so-called vacuum tubes in the early 20 th century.To date,major challenges still remain in the miniaturization of a vacuum channel transistor for on-chip integration in modern solid-state integrated circuits.Here,by introducing nano-sized vacuum gaps(~200 nm)in a van der Waals heterostructure,we successfully fabricated a one-dimensional(1 D)edge-to-edge thermionic emission vacuum tube using graphene as the filament.With the increasing collector voltage,the emitted current exhibits a typical rectifying behavior,with the maximum emission current reaching 200 p A and an ON-OFF ratio of 10;.In addition,it is found that the maximum emission current is proportional to the number of the layers of graphene.Our results expand the research of nano-sized vacuum tubes to an unexplored physical limit of 1 D edge-to-edge emission,and hold great promise for future nano-electronic systems based on it.

Room temperature ferromagnetism in ultra-thin van der Waals crystals of 1T-CrTe2

Although many emerging new phenomena have been unraveled in two dimensional(2D)materials with long-range spin orderings,the usually low critical temperature in van der Waals(vdW)magnetic material has thus far hindered the related practical applications.Here,we show that ferromagnetism can hold above 300 K in a metallic phase of 1T-CrTe2 down to the ultra-thin limit.It thus makes CrTe2 so far the only known exfoliated ultra-thin vdW magnets with intrinsic long-range magnetic ordering above room temperature.An in-plane room-temperature negative anisotropic magnetoresistance(AMR)was obtained in ultra-thin CrTe2 devices,with a sign change in the AMR at lower temperature,with−0.6%and+5%at 300 and 10 K,respectively.Our findings provide insights into magnetism in ultra-thin CrTe2,expanding the vdW crystals toolbox for future room-temperature spintronic applications.

A monolithically sculpted van der Waals nano-opto-electro-mechanical coupler

The nano-opto-electro-mechanical systems(NOEMS)are a class of hybrid solid devices that hold promises in both classical and quantum manipulations of the interplay between one or more degrees of freedom in optical,electrical and mechanical modes.To date,studies of NOEMS using van der Waals(vdW)heterostructures are very limited,although vdW materials are known for emerging phenomena such as spin,valley,and topological physics.Here,we devise a universal method to easily and robustly fabricate vdW heterostructures into an architecture that hosts opto-electro-mechanical couplings in one single device.We demonstrated several functionalities,including nano-mechanical resonator,vacuum channel diodes,and ultrafast thermo-radiator,using monolithically sculpted graphene NOEMS as a platform.Optical readout of electric and magnetic field tuning of mechanical resonance in a CrOCl/graphene vdW NOEMS is further demonstrated.Our results suggest that the introduction of the vdW heterostructure into the NOEMS family will be of particular potential for the development of novel lab-on-a-chip systems.