Monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides are ideal materials to control both spin and valley degrees of freedom either electrically or optically. Nevertheless, optical excitation mostly generates excitons species with inherently short lifetime and spin/valley relaxation time. Here we demonstrate a very efficient spin/valley optical pumping of resident electrons in n-doped WSe₂ and WS₂ monolayers. We observe that, using a continuous wave laser and appropriate doping and excitation densities, negative trion doublet lines exhibit circular polarization of opposite sign and the photoluminescence intensity of the triplet trion is more than four times larger with circular excitation than with linear excitation. We interpret our results as a consequence of a large dynamic polarization of resident electrons using circular light.

In this study, a simple, efficient, and economical process is reported for the direct synthesis of carbon nanotube (CNT) field emitters on metal alloy. Given that CNT field emitters can be customized with ease for compact and cold field emission devices, they are promising replacements for thermionic emitters in widely accessible X-ray source electron guns. High performance CNT emitter samples were prepared in optimized plasma conditions through the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process and subsequently characterized by using a scanning electron microscope, tunneling electron microscope, and Raman spectroscopy. For the cathode current, field emission (FE) characteristics with respective turn on (1 μA/cm²) and threshold (1 mA/cm²) field of 2.84 and 4.05 V/μm were obtained. For a field of 5.24 V/μm, maximum current density of 7 mA/cm² was achieved and a field enhancement factor β of 2838 was calculated. In addition, the CNT emitters sustained a current density of 6.7 mA/cm² for 420 min under a field of 5.2 V/μm, confirming good operational stability. Finally, an X-ray generated image of an integrated circuit was taken using the compact field emission device developed herein.

We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a carbon nanotube enabled open-type X-ray system for medical imaging. We directly grew the carbon nanotubes used as electron emitter for electron gun on a non-polished raw metallic rectangular-rounded substrate with an area of 0.1377 cm² through a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition system. The stable field emission properties with triode electrodes after electrical aging treatment showed an anode emission current of 0.63 mA at a gate field of 7.51 V/μm. The 4.5-inch cubic shape open type X-ray system was developed consisting of an X-ray aperture, a vacuum part, an anode high voltage part, and a field emission electron gun including three electrodes with focusing, gate and cathode electrodes. Using this system, we obtained high-resolution X-ray images accelerated at 42–70 kV voltage by digital switching control between emitter and ground electrode.

The roadmap of future innovative device developments foresees the reduction of material dimensions down to nanometer scale and the incorporation of novel degrees of freedom. For instance, electrons and holes in 2D semiconductors like MoS₂ monolayers exhibit a unique coupling between the spin and the crystal momentum, also referred to as the valley. A crucial requirement for future applications is therefore the possibility to initialise the spin/valley degree of freedom in these materials. Here we investigate the optical initialisation of the valley degree of freedom in charge-tunable MoS₂ monolayers encapsulated with hexagonal boron nitride at cryogenic temperatures. We report in photoluminescence a large steady state valley polarization of the different excitonic complexes following circularly-polarized laser excitation. We reveal efficient valley initialisation of positively-charged excitons, which have so far proved to be elusive in non-encapsulated monolayers due to defect and laser-induced large electron doping. We find that negatively-charged excitons present a polarization of 70% which is unusually large for non-resonant excitation. We attribute this large valley polarization to the particular band structure of MoS₂. In addition, we demonstrate that circular excitation induces a dynamical polarization of resident electrons and holes––as recently shown in tungsten-based monolayers.

Hyperspectral imaging at cryogenic temperatures is used to investigate exciton and trion propagation in MoSe ₂ monolayers (ML) encapsulated with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Under a tightly focused, continuous-wave laser excitation, the spatial distribution of neutral excitons and charged trions strongly differ at high excitation densities. Remarkably, in this regime the trion distribution develops a halo shape, similar to that previously observed in WS ₂ ML at room temperature and under pulsed excitation. In contrast, the exciton distribution only presents a moderate broadening attributed to a much less pronounced halo. Spatially and spectrally resolved luminescence spectra reveal the buildup of a significant temperature gradient at high excitation power, that is attributed to the energy relaxation of photoinduced hot carriers. We show, via a numerical resolution of the transport equations for excitons and trions, that the halo can be interpreted as thermal drift of trions due to a Seebeck term in the particle current. The model shows that the difference between trion and exciton profiles is simply understood in terms of the very different lifetimes of these two quasiparticles.

In semiconductors under tightly-focused photocarrier excitation, the lateral variation of carrier concentration induces a lateral variation of photovoltage. In chemically-passivated p-type GaAs films at 300 K, we show experimentally and theoretically that the photovoltage lateral dependence is able to block the photoelectron diffusion, thus reducing the effective charge diffusion constant by a factor of $\approx 5$ with respect to surface-free conditions and producing a self-trapping of photoelectrons. This effect is not present for surface-free and for oxidized samples, for which the photovoltage magnitude is strongly reduced. The photovoltage lateral variation also induces a coupling between charge and spin diffusion. Because of this coupling, the effective spin diffusion constant is significantly larger than the effective charge one.