Strong and Broadly Tunable Plasmon Resonances in Thick Films of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes.

Low-dimensional plasmonic materials can function as high quality terahertz and infrared antennas at deep subwavelength scales. Despite these antennas' strong coupling to electromagnetic fields, there is a pressing need to further strengthen their absorption. We address this problem by fabricating thick films of aligned, uniformly sized semiconducting carbon nanotubes and showing that their plasmon resonances are strong, narrow, and broadly tunable. With thicknesses ranging from 25 to 250 nm, our films exhibit peak attenuation reaching 70%, ensemble quality factors reaching 9, and electrostatically tunable peak frequencies by a factor of 2.3. Excellent nanotube alignment leads to the attenuation being 99% linearly polarized along the nanotube axis. Increasing the film thickness blueshifts the plasmon resonators down to peak wavelengths as low as 1.4 µm, a new near-infrared regime in which they can both overlap the S11 nanotube exciton energy and access the technologically important infrared telecom band.

Coherent Plasmon and Phonon-Plasmon Resonances in Carbon Nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes provide a rare access point into the plasmon physics of one-dimensional electronic systems. By assembling purified nanotubes into uniformly sized arrays, we show that they support coherent plasmon resonances, that these plasmons couple to nanotube and substrate phonons, and that the resulting phonon-plasmon resonances have quality factors as high as 10. Because nanotube plasmons intensely strengthen electromagnetic fields and light-matter interactions, they provide a compelling platform for surface-enhanced spectroscopy and tunable optical devices at deep-subwavelength scales.

Prominent electric properties of BiFeO3 shells sputtered on ZnO-nanorod cores with LaNiO3 buffer layers.

In this work, template-assisted methods were adopted to grow BiFeO3 (BFO)-nanorod arrays on substrates. Well-aligned ZnO-nanorod arrays (ZNAs) grown hydrothermally were chosen as positive templates. It was found that perovskite BFO could not be radio frequency (RF)-magnetron sputtered directly on a ZNA at elevated temperatures. Only amorphous BFO was obtained. However, polycrystalline BFO shells could be fabricated by RF-magnetron sputtering on ZNA templates by the introduction of LaNiO3 (LNO) buffer layers. The LNO buffer layer deposited on the ZNA by RF-magnetron sputtering was demonstrated to improve the adhesion and crystallization of the sequentially sputtered BFO shells. The electrical properties were evaluated by conductive atomic force microscopy and piezoresponse force microscopy. Bulk-limited Poole-Frenkel emission dominates the conduction of BFO shells at positive bias, while barrier-limited Schottky emission accounts for the conduction at negative bias due to the interface between the Pt/Ir-coated tip and the BFO. The piezoelectric coefficient (d33) was estimated to be ∼32.93 pm V(-1) and a polarization of 133 µC cm(-2) was derived. These values are higher than those reported previously for BFO films.

Synthesis of In-Plane Artificial Lattices of Monolayer Multijunctions.

Recently, monolayers of van der Waals materials, including transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), are considered ideal building blocks for constructing 2D artificial lattices and heterostructures. Heterostructures with multijunctions of more than two monolayer TMDs are intriguing for exploring new physics and materials properties. Obtaining in-plane heterojunctions of monolayer TMDs with atomically sharp interfaces is very significant for fundamental research and applications. Currently, multistep synthesis for more than two monolayer TMDs remains a challenge because decomposition or compositional alloying is thermodynamically favored at the high growth temperature. Here, a multistep chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of the in-plane multijunctions of monolayer TMDs is presented. A low growth temperature synthesis is developed to avoid compositional fluctuations of as-grown TMDs, defects formations, and interfacial alloying for high heterointerface quality and thermal stability of monolayer TMDs. With optimized parameters, atomically sharp interfaces are successfully achieved in the synthesis of in-plane artificial lattices of the WS2 /WSe2 /MoS2 at reduced growth temperatures. Growth behaviors as well as the heterointerface quality are carefully studied in varying growth parameters. Highly oriented strain patterns are found in the second harmonic generation imaging of the TMD multijunctions, suggesting that the in-plane heteroepitaxial growth may induce distortion for unique material symmetry.

Phase-driven magneto-electrical characteristics of single-layer MoS2.

Magnetism of the MoS2 semiconducting atomic layer was highlighted for its great potential in the applications of spintronics and valleytronics. In this study, we demonstrate an evolution of magneto-electrical properties of single layer MoS2 with the modulation of defect configurations and formation of a partial 1T phase. With Ar treatment, sulfur was depleted within the MoS2 flake leading to a 2H (low-spin) → partial 1T (high-spin) phase transition. The phase transition was accompanied by the development of a ferromagnetic phase. Alternatively, the phase transition could be driven by the desorption of S atoms at the edge of MoS2via O2 treatment while with a different ordering magnitude in magnetism. The edge-sensitive magnetism of the single-layer MoS2 was monitored by magnetic force microscopy and validated by a first-principle calculation with graded-Vs (sulfur vacancy) terminals set at the edge, where band-splitting appeared more prominent with increasing Vs. Treatment with Ar and O2 enabled a dual electrical characteristic of the field effect transistor (FET) that featured linear and saturated responses of different magnitudes in the Ids-Vds curves, whereas the pristine MoS2 FET displayed only a linear electrical dependency. The correlation and tuning of the Vs-1T phase transition would provide a playground for tailoring the phase-driven properties of MoS2 semiconducting atomic layers in spintronic applications.