Valley-polarized excitonic Mott insulator in WS2/WSe2 moiré superlattice
OA Location
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The strongly enhanced electron–electron interactions in semiconducting moiré superlattices formed by transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers have led to a plethora of intriguing fermionic correlated states. Meanwhile, interlayer excitons in a type II aligned heterobilayer moiré superlattice, with electrons and holes separated in different layers, inherit this enhanced interaction and suggest that tunable correlated bosonic quasiparticles with a valley degree of freedom could be realized. Here we determine the spatial extent of interlayer excitons and the band hierarchy of correlated states that arises from the strong repulsion between interlayer excitons and correlated electrons in a WS2/WSe2 moiré superlattice. We also find evidence that an excitonic Mott insulator state emerges when one interlayer exciton occupies one moiré cell. Furthermore, the valley polarization of the excitonic Mott insulator state is enhanced by nearly one order of magnitude. Our study demonstrates that the WS2/WSe2 moiré superlattice is a promising platform for engineering and exploring new correlated states of fermion, bosons and a mixture of both.
Date Issued
2024-01
Date Acceptance
2023-09-22
Citation
Nature Physics, 2024, 20 (1), pp.34-39
ISSN
1745-2473
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
34
End Page
39
Journal / Book Title
Nature Physics
Volume
20
Issue
1
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02266-2
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-11-06