Squeezed metallic droplet with tunable Kubo gap and charge injection in transition metal dichalcogenides
- 24 March 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 117 (12), 6362-6369
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920036117
Abstract
Shrinking the size of a bulk metal into nanoscale leads to the discreteness of electronic energy levels, the so-called Kubo gap delta. Renormalization of the electronic properties with a tunable and size-dependent d renders fascinating photon emission and electron tunneling. In contrast with usual three-dimensional (3D) metal clusters, here we demonstrate that Kubo gap delta can be achieved with a two-dimensional (2D) metallic transition metal dichalcogenide (i.e., 1T'-phase MoTe2) nanocluster embedded in a semiconducting polymorph (i.e., 1H-phase MoTe2). Such a 1T'/1H MoTe2 nanodomain resembles a 3D metallic droplet squeezed in a 2D space which shows a strong polarization catastrophewhile simultaneously maintaining its bond integrity, which is absent in traditional delta-gapped 3D clusters. The weak screening of the host 2D MoTe2 leads to photon emission of such pseudometallic systems and a ballistic injection of carriers in the 1T'/1H/1T' homojunctions which may find applications in sensors and 2D reconfigurable devices.This publication has 52 references indexed in Scilit:
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