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Photoacoustic spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating semiconductors and determining some of their basic properties. However, generating a signal that is large enough for the investigated samples is still challenging. To address this, the focus is on enhancing photoacoustic (PA) signal intensity in a non-complex way, which does not require changing any part of an experimental setup. The PA signal intensity enhancement is mainly achieved by manipulating the sample volume and its surroundings. MoS2, a layered material that belongs to the van der Waals crystals was selected due to ease of exfoliation to the proper thickness. A reduction in MoS2 thickness from 112 to 7 µm, resulted in enhancement of the PA signal by a factor of ∼50. A simple model has been proposed to describe the results based on thermal processes. Additionally, a method to determine the energy gap in transition metal dichalcogenides from PA measurements is presented.

Abstract Recent studies have established Van der Waals (vdW) layered and 2D rare‐earth tritellurides (RTe3) as superconductors and near room‐temperature charge density wave (CDW) materials. Their environmental stability raises natural concern owing to aging/stability effects observed in other tellurium‐based layered crystals. Here, the results establish the stability and environmental aging characteristics of these RTe3 systems involving a variety of metals such as La, Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy, and Ho. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results show that all the RTe3 sheets oxidize to form thin TeOx layers that are primarily confined to the surface, edges, and grain boundaries. Time‐resolved in situ Raman spectroscopy measurements are used to understand the kinetics of the oxidization process for different lanthanide metal cations and establish their relative stability/resilience to oxidization. Overall results indicate that the vdW layers show higher air stability as the 4f electron number decreases going from Ho to La, resulting in the most stable LaTe3 compared to the least stable HoTe3. Comprehensive quantum mechanical simulations reveal that environmental degradation originates from a strong oxidizing reaction with O2 molecules, while humidity (H2O) plays a negligible role unless Te vacancies are present. Moreover, the simulations explain the effects of 4f electrons on the work function and Te vacancies formation, which directly impact the aging characteristics of RTe3 layers. Interestingly, optical and electrical measurements show that the CDW response is still observed in aged RTe3 layers owing to the presence of underlying pristine/nonoxidized RTe3 layers, except CDW transition temperatures increase due to the thickness effect. Overall results offer the first in‐depth environmental aging studies on these materials, which can be applied to engineer and design their chemical stability, surface properties, and overall CDW characteristics.

Here, we present comprehensive phononic and charge density wave properties (CDW) of rare-earth van der Waals tritellurides through temperature dependent angle-resolved Raman spectroscopy measurements. All the possible rare-earth tritellurides (RTe3) ranging from R = La–Nd, Sm, Gd–Tm were synthesized through a chemical vapor transport technique to achieve high quality crystals with excellent CDW characteristics. Raman spectroscopy studies successfully identify the emergence of the CDW state and transition temperature (TCDW), which offers a non-destructive method to identify their CDW response with micron spatial resolution. Temperature dependent Raman measurements further correlate how the atomic mass of metal cations and the resulting chemical pressure influence its CDW properties and offer detailed insight into the strength of CDW amplitude mode-phonon coupling during the CDW transition. Angle-resolved Raman measurements offer the first insights into the CDW-phonon symmetry interplay by monitoring the change in the symmetry of phonon mode across the CDW transition. Overall results introduce the library of RTe3 CDW materials and establish their characteristics through the non-destructive angle-resolved Raman spectroscopy technique.

GaAsBi/GaAs nanowires (NWs) grown on Si substrate and proper reference samples have been studied by photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy. It has been shown that PA signal originating from NWs is quite strong and can be easily identified in the PA spectra, as well as distinguished from the signal originating from the Si substrate. The absorption edge of GaAsBi/GaAs and GaAs NWs has been determined from the analysis of amplitude PA spectra to be 1.26 eV and 1.42 eV, respectively. These values are consistent with the band gap reduction resulting from the introduction of ~2% Bi in bulk GaAsBi alloy. The presented results prove that, despite light scattering, which is typical for NWs, PA spectroscopy is an excellent tool to study the absorption edge in semiconductor NWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) has been applied to study electron and hole traps in InPBi alloys with 2.2 and 2.4% Bi grown by molecular beam epitaxy. One donor-like trap with the activation energy of 0.45–0.47 eV and one acceptor-like trap with activation energy of 0.08 eV have been identified in DLTS measurements. For the reference sample (InP grown at the same temperature), the deep donor trap has also been observed, while the acceptor trap was not detected. According to the literature, the deep donor level found in InP(Bi) at 0.45–0.47 eV below the conduction band has been attributed to the isolated PIn defect, while the second trap, which is observed only for Bi containing samples at 0.08 eV above the valence band can be attributed to Bi clusters in InPBi. This acceptor level was proposed to be responsible for the observed partial compensation of native free electron density in InPBi layers. It is also shown that the deep donor traps are active in photoluminescence (PL). A strong radiative recombination between donor traps and the valence band are observed in PL spectra at energy 0.6–0.8 eV, i.e. ~0.47 eV below the energy gap of InPBi, which is determined by contactless electroreflectance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two photoluminescence (PL) peaks were observed in temperature-dependent PL spectra of GaSb1−xBix layers with 0 < x ≤ 0.042. The high-energy (HE) peak was found to be associated with the bandgap-related emission in GaSb1−xBix, since its energy corresponds to the bandgap determined from photoreflectance measurements. The low-energy (LE) peak was attributed to the optical transition between the conduction band and native acceptor states, and was observed at low temperatures where acceptor states are not occupied by electrons. With increasing temperature, the intensity of the LE peak is quenched with the activation energy corresponding to the energy difference between HE and LE peaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]