Ultrafast non-excitonic valley Hall effect in MoS2/WTe2 heterobilayers

Abstract

The valley Hall effect (VHE) in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) crystals is a promising approach to study the valley pseudospin. Most experiments so far have used bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) through local photoexcitation. However, the valley depolarization of such excitons is fast, so that several challenges remain to be resolved. We address this issue by exploiting a unipolar VHE using a heterobilayer made of monolayer MoS2/WTe2 to exhibit a long valley-polarized lifetime due to the absence of electron-hole exchange interaction. The unipolar VHE is manifested by reduced photoluminescence at the MoS2 A exciton energy. Furthermore, we provide quantitative information on the time-dependent valley Hall dynamics by performing the spatially-resolved ultrafast Kerr-rotation microscopy; we find that the valley-polarized electrons persist for more than 4 nanoseconds and the valley Hall mobility exceeds 4.49x10(3)cm(2)/Vs, which is orders of magnitude larger than previous reports. The valley Hall effect in 2D materials is a promising approach for future valleytronic applications, but it is usually based on excitons with short lifetimes. Here, spin polarized electrons are injected from WTe2 into MoS2, leading to a unipolar valley Hall effect with enhanced lifetimes and mobility.