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The passivation engineering of the hole transport layer in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has significantly decreased carrier accumulation and open circuit voltage (

In two-dimensional materials research, oxidation is usually considered as a common source for the degradation of electronic and optoelectronic devices or even device failure. However, in some cases a controlled oxidation can open the possibility to widely tune the band structure of 2D materials. In particular, we demonstrate the controlled oxidation of titanium trisulfide (TiS3), a layered semiconductor that attracted much attention recently thanks to its quasi-1D electronic and optoelectronic properties and its direct bandgap of 1.1 eV. Heating TiS3 in air above 300 °C gradually converts it into TiO2, a semiconductor with a wide bandgap of 3.2 eV with applications in photo-electrochemistry and catalysis. In this work, we investigate the controlled thermal oxidation of individual TiS3 nanoribbons and its influence on the optoelectronic properties of TiS3-based photodetectors. We observe a step-wise change in the cut-off wavelength from its pristine value ~1000 nm to 450 nm after subjecting the TiS3 devices to subsequent thermal treatment cycles. Ab-initio and many-body calculations confirm an increase of the bandgap of titanium oxysulfide (TiO2-xSx) when increasing the amount of oxygen and reducing the amount of sulfur.

In two-dimensional materials research, oxidation is usually considered as a common source for the degradation of electronic and optoelectronic devices or even device failure. However, in some cases a controlled oxidation can open the possibility to widely tune the band structure of 2D materials. In particular, we demonstrate the controlled oxidation of titanium trisulfide (TiS3), a layered semicon-ductor that has attracted much attention recently thanks to its quasi-1D electronic and optoelectron-ic properties and its direct bandgap of 1.1 eV. Heating TiS3 in air above 300 °C gradually converts it into TiO2, a semiconductor with a wide bandgap of 3.2 eV with applications in photo-electrochemistry and catalysis. In this work, we investigate the controlled thermal oxidation of indi-vidual TiS3 nanoribbons and its influence on the optoelectronic properties of TiS3-based photodetec-tors. We observe a step-wise change in the cut-off wavelength from its pristine value ~1000 nm to 450 nm after subjecting the TiS3 devices to subsequent thermal treatment cycles. Ab-initio and many-body calculations confirm an increase in the bandgap of titanium oxysulfide (TiO2-xSx) when in-creasing the amount of oxygen and reducing the amount of sulfur.

Strain engineering, which aims to tune the bandgap of a semiconductor by the application of strain, has emerged as an interesting way to control the electrical and optical properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Apart from the changes in the intrinsic properties of 2D materials, the application of strain can be also used to modify the characteristics of devices based on them. In this work, we study flexible and transparent photodetectors based on single-layer MoS2 under the application of biaxial strain. We find that by controlling the level of strain, we can tune the photoresponsivity (by 2-3 orders of magnitude), the response time (from, 3 main text figures and 12 supporting information figures

This article belongs to the Special Issue Low Dimensional Materials for Environmental and Biomedical Applications., The research field of two dimensional (2D) materials strongly relies on optical microscopy characterization tools to identify atomically thin materials and to determine their number of layers. Moreover, optical microscopy-based techniques opened the door to study the optical properties of these nanomaterials. We presented a comprehensive study of the differential reflectance spectra of 2D semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and WSe2, with thickness ranging from one layer up to six layers. We analyzed the thickness-dependent energy of the different excitonic features, indicating the change in the band structure of the different TMDC materials with the number of layers. Our work provided a route to employ differential reflectance spectroscopy for determining the number of layers of MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and WSe2., This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research, innovation programme (grant agreement No. 755655, ERC-StG 2017 project 2D-TOPSENSE), the EU Graphene Flagship funding (Grant Graphene Core 2, 785219), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the research program Rubicon with project number 680-50-1515, the MINECO (program FIS2015-67367-C2-1-P), and the China Scholarship Council (File NO. 201506120102).

The research field of two dimensional (2D) materials strongly relies on optical microscopy characterization tools to identify atomically thin materials and to determine their number of layers. Moreover, optical microscopy-based techniques also opened the door to study the optical properties of these nanomaterials. We present a comprehensive study of the differential reflectance spectra of 2D semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2, with thickness ranging from one layer up to six layers. We analyze the thickness-dependent energy of the different excitonic features, indicating the change in the band structure of the different TMDC materials with the number of layers. Our work provides a route to employ differential reflectance spectroscopy for determining the number of layers of MoS2, MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2.

The capability to detect the polarization state of light is crucial in many day‐life applications and scientific disciplines. Novel anisotropic 2D materials such as TiS3 combine polarization sensitivity, given by the in‐plane optical anisotropy, with excellent electrical properties. Here, the fabrication of a monolithic polarization‐sensitive broadband photodetector based on a mixed‐dimensionality TiS3/Si p–n junction is demonstrated. The fabricated devices show broadband responsivity up to 1050 nm, a strong sensitivity to linearly polarized illumination with difference between the two orthogonal polarization states up to 350%, and a good detectivity and fast response time. The discussed devices can be used as building blocks to fabricate more complex polarization‐sensitive systems such as polarimeters., The authors acknowledge funding from the EU Graphene Flagship (Grant Graphene Core2 785219) and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 755655, ERC‐StG 2017 project 2D‐TOPSENSE). R.F. acknowledges support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the research program Rubicon with project number 680‐50‐1515. D.P.d.L. acknowledges support from the MINECO (program FIS2015‐67367‐C2‐1‐P). Y.N. acknowledges the grant from the China Scholarship Council (File No. 201506120102). W.C.J. acknowledges the Program for the Top Young and Middle‐aged Innovative Talents of Harbin Institute of Technology. MIRE group acknowledges financial support from MINECO‐FEDER (MAT2015‐65203‐R).

Designer heterostructures can now be assembled layer-by-layer with unmatched precision thanks to the recently developed deterministic placement methods to transfer two-dimensional (2D) materials. This possibility constitutes the birth of a very active research field on the so-called van der Waals heterostructures. Moreover, these deterministic placement methods also open the door to fabricate complex devices, which would be otherwise very difficult to achieve by conventional bottom-up nanofabrication approaches, and to fabricate fully-encapsulated devices with exquisite electronic properties. The integration of 2D materials with existing technologies such as photonic and superconducting waveguides and fiber optics is another exciting possibility. Here, we review the state-of-the-art of the deterministic placement methods, describing and comparing the different alternative methods available in the literature and we illustrate their potential to fabricate van der Waals heterostructures, to integrate 2D materials into complex devices and to fabricate artificial bilayer structures where the layers present a user-defined rotational twisting angle., Tutorial Review, 13 figures. Authors' pre-peer review version of the article

Strain engineering in single-layer semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides aims to tune their bandgap energy and to modify their optoelectronic properties by the application of external strain. In this paper we study transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers deposited on polymeric substrates under the application of biaxial strain, both tensile and compressive. We can control the amount of biaxial strain applied by letting the substrate thermally expand or compress by changing the substrate temperature. After modelling the substrate-dependent strain transfer process with a finite elements simulation, we performed micro-differential spectroscopy of four transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers (MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, WSe2) under the application of biaxial strain and measured their optical properties. For tensile strain we observe a redshift of the bandgap that reaches a value as large as 94 meV/% in the case of single-layer WS2 deposited on polypropylene. The observed bandgap shifts as a function of substrate extension/compression follow the order WS2 > WSe2 > MoS2 > MoSe2., 13 pages, 5 figures

Since their discovery single-layer semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted much attention thanks to their outstanding optical and mechanical properties. Strain engineering in these two-dimensional materials aims to tune their bandgap energy and to modify their optoelectronic properties by the application of external strain. In this paper we demonstrate that biaxial strain, both tensile and compressive, can be applied and released in a timescale of a few seconds in a reproducible way on transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers deposited on polymeric substrates. We can control the amount of biaxial strain applied by letting the substrate expand or compress. To do this we change the substrate temperature and choose materials with a large thermal expansion coefficient. After the investigation of the substrate-dependent strain transfer, we performed micro-differential spectroscopy of four transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers (MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, WSe2) under the application of biaxial strain and measured their optical properties. For tensile strain we observe a redshift of the bandgap that reaches a value as large as 95 meV/% in the case of single-layer WS2 deposited on polypropylene. The observed bandgap shifts as a function of substrate extension/compression follow the order MoSe2 < MoS2 < WSe2 < WS2. Theoretical calculations of these four materials under biaxial strain predict the same trend for the material-dependent rates of the shift and reproduce well the features observed in the measured reflectance spectra., 10 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, supporting information

We study mechanically exfoliated nanosheets of franckeite by quantitative optical microscopy. The analysis of transmission-mode and epi-illumination-mode optical microscopy images provides a rapid method to estimate the thickness of the exfoliated flakes at first glance. A quantitative analysis of the optical contrast spectra by means of micro-reflectance allows one to determine the refractive index of franckeite over a broad range of the visible spectrum through a fit of the acquired spectra to a model based on the Fresnel law., We acknowledge funding from the European Commission under the Graphene Flagship, contract CNECTICT-604391, from EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 696656 (GrapheneCore1 – Graphene-based disruptive technologies), from the FP7 ITN MOLESCO (project no. 606728), from the MINECO (FIS2015-67367-C2-1-P, MAT2014-57915-R, MDM-2014-0377 and Ramón y Cajal 2014 program RYC-2014-16626), from the Comunidad de Madrid (MAD2D-CM Program (S2013/MIT-3007)) and NANOFRONTMAG-CM program (S2013/MIT-2850). RF acknowledges support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the research program Rubicon with project number 680-50-1515.

Two-dimensional semiconducting materials are particularly appealing for many applications. Although theory predicts a large number of two-dimensional materials, experimentally only a few of these materials have been identified and characterized comprehensively in the ultrathin limit. Lead iodide, which belongs to the transition metal halides family and has a direct bandgap in the visible spectrum, has been known for a long time and has been well characterized in its bulk form. Nevertheless, studies of this material in the nanometer thickness regime are rather scarce. In this article we demonstrate an easy way to synthesize ultrathin, highly crystalline flakes of PbI2 by precipitation from a solution in water. We thoroughly characterize the produced thin flakes with different techniques ranging from optical and Raman spectros-copy to temperature-dependent photoluminescence and electron microscopy. We compare the results to ab initio calculations of the band structure of the material. Finally, we fabricate photodetectors based on PbI2 and study their optoelectronic properties., main text 20 pages + 10 figures, supporting information 16 pages + 17 figures

Optical spectroscopy techniques such as differential reflectance and transmittance have proven to be very powerful techniques to study 2D materials. However, a thorough description of the experimental setups needed to carry out these measurements is lacking in the literature. We describe a versatile optical microscope setup to carry out differential reflectance and transmittance spectroscopy in 2D materials with a lateral resolution of ~1 micron in the visible and near-infrared part of the spectrum. We demonstrate the potential of the presented setup to determine the number of layers of 2D materials and to characterize their fundamental optical properties such as excitonic resonances. We illustrate its performance by studying mechanically exfoliated and chemical vapor-deposited transition metal dichalcogenide samples., 5 main text figures + 1 table with all the part numbers to replicate the experimental setup + 4 supp. info. figures

The investigation of optoelectronic devices based on two-dimensional materials and their heterostructures is a very active area of investigation with both fundamental and applied aspects involved. We present a description of a home-built scanning photocurrent microscope that we have designed and developed to perform electronic transport and optical measurements of two-dimensional materials based devices. The complete system is rather inexpensive (, 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, supporting information

In this work we study the optoelectronic properties of individual TiO2 fibres produced through coupled sol-gel and electrospinning, by depositing them onto pre-patterned Ti/Au electrodes on SiO2/Si substrates. Transport measurements in the dark give a conductivity above 2*10^-5 S, which increases up to 8*10^-5 S in vacuum. Photocurrent measurements under UV-irradiation show high sensitivity (responsivity of 90 A/W for 375 nm wavelength) and a response time to illumination of ~ 5 s, which is superior to state-of-the-art TiO2-based UV photodetectors. Both responsivity and response speed are higher in air than in vacuum, due to oxygen adsorbed on the TiO2 surface which traps photoexcited free electrons in the conduction band, thus reducing the recombination processes. The photodetectors are sensitive to light polarization, with an anisotropy ratio of 12%. These results highlight the interesting combination of large surface area and low 1D transport resistance in electrospun TiO2 fibres. The simplicity of the sol-gel/electrospinning synthesis method, combined with a fast response and high responsivity makes them attractive candidates for UV-photodetection in ambient conditions. We anticipate their high (photo) conductance is also relevant for photocatalysis and dye-sensitized solar cells., Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures in the main text, 9 figures in the Supporting Information. in J. Mater. Chem. C, 2016

Gallium selenide (GaSe) is a novel two-dimensional material, which belongs to the layered III-VIA semiconductors family and attracted interest recently as it displays single-photon emitters at room temperature and strong optical non-linearity. Nonetheless, few-layer GaSe is not stable under ambient conditions and it tends to degrade over time. Here we combine atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and optoelectronic measurements in photodetectors based on thin GaSe to study its long-term stability. We found that the GaSe flakes exposed to air tend to decompose forming firstly amorphous selenium and Ga2Se3 and subsequently Ga2O3. While the first stage is accompanied by an increase in photocurrent, in the second stage we observe a decrease in photocurrent which leads to the final failure of GaSe photodetectors. Additionally, we found that the encapsulation of the GaSe photodetectors with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) can protect the GaSe from degradation and can help to achieve long-term stability of the devices., Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, supporting information

We explore the use of Si3N4/Si substrates as a substitute of the standard SiO2/Si substrates employed nowadays to fabricate nanodevices based on 2D materials. We systematically study the visibility of several 2D semiconducting materials that are attracting a great deal of interest in nanoelectronics and optoelectronics: MoS2, MoSe2, WSe2 and black phosphorus. We find that the use of Si3N4/Si substrates provides an increase of the optical contrast up to a 50%-100% and also the maximum contrast shifts towards wavelength values optimal for human eye detection, making optical identification of 2D semiconductors easier., Comment: 4 figures + 3 supp.info. figures

One of the stimulating area of superconductors investigations lies in the achieved and potential applications as radiation detectors. Results concerning annular Josephson junctions in this context are discussed. Fundamental aspects, mainly related to the fluxon dynamics in such structures, are discussed in detail. The results confirm the importance of the precious sharing of technological requests with fundamental physical implications. Peculiar results are reported dealing with new resonances occurring on these Josephson junctions of annular configuration.

The fabrication of artificial materials by stacking of individual two-dimensional (2D) materials is amongst one of the most promising research avenues in the field of 2D materials. Moreover, this strategy to fabricate new man-made materials can be further extended by fabricating hybrid stacks between 2D materials and other functional materials with different dimensionality making the potential number of combinations almost infinite. Among all these possible combinations, mixing 2D materials with transition metal oxides can result especially useful because of the large amount of interesting physical phenomena displayed separately by these two material families. We present a hybrid device based on the stacking of a single layer MoS2 onto a lanthanum strontium manganite (La0.7Sr0.3MnO3) thin film, creating an atomically thin device. It shows a rectifying electrical transport with a ratio of 103, and a photovoltaic effect with V oc up to 0.4 V. The photodiode behaviour arises as a consequence of the different doping character of these two materials. This result paves the way towards combining the efforts of these two large materials science communities.

We present a method to carry out electrical and optoelectronic measurements on 2D materials using carbon fiber microprobes to directly make electrical contacts with the 2D materials without damaging them. The working principle of this microprobing method is illustrated by measuring transport in MoS flakes in vertical (transport in the out-of-plane direction) and lateral (transport within the crystal plane) configurations, finding performances comparable to those reported for MoS devices fabricated by the conventional lithographic process. We also show that this method can be used with other 2D materials., We acknowledge funding from the European Commission under the Graphene Flagship, contract CNECTICT-604391, from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 696656 (GrapheneCore1-Graphene-based disruptive technologies), from the FP7 ITN MOLESCO (project no. 606728), from the MINECO (Ramón y Cajal 2014 program RYC-2014-01406, RYC-2014-16626, MAT2014-58399-JIN and FIS2015-67367-C2-1-P), from the Comunidad de Madrid (MAD2D-CM Program (S2013/MIT-3007)) and the NANOFRONTMAG-CM program (S2013/MIT-2850). RF acknowledges support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the research program Rubicon with project number 680-50-1515. YN acknowledges the grant from the China Scholarship Council (File no. 201506120102).

p–n junctions based on vertically stacked single or few-layer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have attracted substantial scientific interest. Due to the propensity of TMDCs to show exclusively one type of conductivity, n- or p-type, heterojunctions of different materials are typically fabricated to produce diode-like current rectification and photovoltaic response. Recently, artificial, stable and substitutional doping of MoS2 into n- and p-type materials has been demonstrated. MoS2 is an interesting material for use in optoelectronic applications due to its potential of low-cost production in large quantities, strong light–matter interactions and chemical stability. Here we report the characterization of the optoelectronic properties of vertical homojunctions made by stacking few-layer flakes of MoS2:Fe (n-type) and MoS2:Nb (p-type). The junctions exhibit a peak external quantum efficiency of 4.7% and a maximum open circuit voltage of 0.51 V; they are stable in air; and their rectification characteristics and photovoltaic response are in excellent agreement with the Shockley diode model. The gate-tunability of the maximum output power, the ideality factor and the shunt resistance indicate that the dark current is dominated by trap-assisted recombination and that the photocurrent collection depends strongly on the spatial extent of the space charge region. We demonstrate a response time faster than 80 ms and highlight the potential to integrate such devices into quasi-transparent and flexible optoelectronics., S. A. S. and N. A. acknowledge funding from the European Commission through the FP7 ITN MOLESCO (Project Number 606728). E. A. gratefully acknowledges financial support from L’Oréal-UNESCO through the Women in Science program. A. J. M.-M. acknowledges the financial support from MICINN (Spain) through the scholarship BES-2012-057346. D. Y. and T. S. acknowledge the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China under the MOST 104-2112-M-018-004 and 104-2221-E-018-017. D. P. is thankful for funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through FIS2015-67367-C2-1-P. R. F. thanks the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the financial support through the research programme Rubicon with the project number 680-50-1515. AC-G. acknowledges the support from the BBVA Foundation through the fellowship “I Convocatoria de Ayudas Fundacion BBVA a Investigadores, Innovadores y Creadores Culturales” (“Semiconductores ultradelgados: hacia la optoelectronica flexible”), from the MINECO (Ramón y Cajal 2014 program, RYC-2014-01406), from the MICINN (MAT2014-58399-JIN) and from the Comunidad de Madrid (MAD2D-CM Program (S2013/MIT-3007)), and the European Commission under the Graphene Flagship, contract CNECTICT-604391.

The growth of single-layer MoS2 with chemical vapor deposition is an established method that can produce large-area and high quality samples. In this article, we investigate the geometrical and optical properties of hundreds of individual single-layer MoS2 crystallites grown on a highly-polished sapphire substrate. Most of the crystallites are oriented along the terraces of the sapphire substrate and have an area comprised between 10 µm2 and 60 µm2. Differential reflectance measurements performed on these crystallites show that the area of the MoS2 crystallites has an influence on the position and broadening of the B exciton while the orientation does not influence the A and B excitons of MoS2. These measurements demonstrate that differential reflectance measurements have the potential to be used to characterize the homogeneity of large-area chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown samples., Andres Castellanos-Gomez acknowledges support from the European Commission (Graphene Flagship: contract CNECTICT-604391), the MINECO (Ramón y Cajal 2014 program RYC-2014-01406 and program MAT2014-58399-JIN) and the Comunidad de Madrid (MAD2D-CM program S2013/MIT-3007). Riccardo Frisenda acknowledges support from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, Rubicon 680-50-1515). David Perez de Lara acknowledges support from the MINECO (program FIS2015-67367-C2-1-p). Andras Kis and Dimitri Dumcenco acknowledge funding from Swiss SNF Sinergia Grant No. 147607., We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).