Collaborative Research: Plasmonic lasing with two-dimensional heterostructures in the intrinsic regime

非技术描述：一类新的原子级薄材料，被称为二维半导体，作为一种可行的光电子器件材料，如激光器和发光二极管，已经引起了相当大的兴趣。先前的研究报告称，这些新材料受到有害的环境相互作用和材料缺陷的影响，导致发光效率低，从而阻碍了实际应用。该项目最终能够提高纳米级光源的效率和性能，如纳米激光器和新型量子光源，这些光源是即将到来的技术所需要的，这些技术使用光代替电子直接在半导体芯片上实现密集集成信息处理。该研究方法利用了一种很有前途的晶体生长技术，可以在二维材料中产生非常低的缺陷密度。该研究还将这些材料与光学器件相结合，可以将光聚焦到极小的点上，从而大大提高了这些半导体的发光效率。教育活动包括接触代表性不足的群体，以及在材料增长、洁净室制造和光学特性方面培训下一代科学家和工程师，并通过在研究生课程中引入新的基于研究的教育材料。技术描述：单层过渡金属二硫族化合物是一种半导体材料，在光电子和谷电子应用中获得了相当大的兴趣，但经常发现受到环境相互作用和材料缺陷的影响，导致量子效率低。本项目将具有超低无序环境的二维异质结构与低群速度等离子体带边模式相结合，以研究具有高定向输出的片上纳米激光器的激光和量子相干特征。本项目进一步探索门可调谐激子和三角增益，并在Purcell状态下实现与等离子体间隙模式耦合的确定性定位量子发射体。该研究方法结合了材料生长、二维组装和纳米制造，以实现片上光子学和量子信息科学领域的变革性进步，旨在促进“本质清洁”二维半导体的杰出光学特性。与等离子体纳米腔的集成为直接定制Purcell和强耦合状态下的光-物质相互作用提供了令人兴奋的新进展。最终，该项目能够提高芯片上纳米激光器的效率和性能，用于集成光学电路，以及量子信息科学所需的单光子源；这些都受到激子光物理的影响，并且明显受益于低无序环境、减少通量生长材料中的材料缺陷和等离子体耦合来直接提高量子产率。该项目还提出了一个外展模式，重点是与哥伦比亚数学、科学和工程中学（Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering）建立长期关系。哥伦比亚中学是一所6-12年级的公立学校，主要学生是西班牙裔和非裔美国人。针对代表性不足群体的外展活动将利用史蒂文斯与工程领域女性项目和工程领域少数民族国家行动委员会（NACME）等组织的机构关系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nontechnical description: A new class of atomically thin materials, so called two dimensional semiconductors, has gained considerable interest as a viable material for optoelectronic devices such as lasers and light emitting diodes. Previous research reports that these new materials suffer from detrimental environmental interactions and material defects that result in low light emission efficiencies, thereby impeding practical applications. This project ultimately enables an efficiency and performance boost for nanoscale light sources such as nanolasers as well as novel quantum light sources that are required in upcoming technologies that use light instead of electrons to realize densely integrated information processing directly on a semiconductor chip. The research approach utilizes a promising crystal growth technique that leads to very low defect densities in two dimensional materials. The research also integrates these materials with optical devices that can focus the light into extremely small spots, leading to drastically enhanced light emission efficiency from these semiconductors. The educational activities include reaching out to underrepresented groups as well as training the next generation of scientists and engineers in materials growth, clean-room fabrication and optical characterization, and through introducing new research-based educational materials into the graduate curriculum. Technical description: Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides are semiconductor materials that have gained considerable interest for optoelectronic and valleytronic applications but are often found to suffer from environment interactions and material defects that lead to low quantum efficiencies. This project integrates two-dimensional heterostructures featuring ultralow-disorder environments with low-group-velocity plasmonic band-edge modes in order to investigate lasing and quantum coherence signatures of on-chip nanolasers with highly-directional output. This project furthermore explores gate-tunable exciton and trion gain and realizes deterministic positioned quantum emitters coupled to plasmonic gap modes deeply in the Purcell regime. The research approach combines material growth, 2D assembly, and nanofabrication to enable transformative advances for the field of on-chip photonics and quantum information science that aims to facilitate the outstanding optical properties of "intrinsically-clean" 2D semiconductors. The integration with plasmonic nanocavities offers exciting new inroads to directly tailor the light-matter interaction in the Purcell and strong-coupling regime. Ultimately, this project enables an efficiency and performance boost for on-chip nanolasers for the integration in optical circuits, as well as for single-photon sources required for quantum information science; these are all affected by the exciton photophysics and significantly benefit by low-disorder environments, reduced material defects in flux-grown material, and plasmonic coupling to directly increase the quantum yield. The project also puts forth an outreach model that focusses on building long-term relationships with the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering, a public, 6-12 school with a predominant Hispanic and African-American student population. Outreach activities to under-represented groups will leverage Stevens' institutional affiliations with organizations such as the Women in Engineering Program and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.