We report on THz emission in single-crystalline SnS2 in response to above bandgap excitation. Symmetry properties of THz generation suggest that its origin is an ultrafast surface shift current, a 2nd order nonlinear effect that can occur as a result of above-gap photoexcitation of a non-centrosymmetric semiconductor. Multilayer SnS2 can exist in several polytypes that differ in the layer stacking. Of those polytypes, 2H and 18R are centrosymmetric while 4H is not. While Raman spectroscopy suggests that the single crystalline SnS2 in our experiments is 2H, its THz emission has symmetry that are fully consistent with the P3m1 phase of 4H polytype. We hypothesize that the stacking disorder, where strain-free stacking faults that interrupt regions of 2H polytype, can break inversion symmetry and result in THz emission. These results lay the foundations for application of SnS2 as an efficient, stable, flexible THz source material, and highlight the use of THz spectroscopy as a sensitive tool for establishing symmetry properties of materials.
GeS and GeSe are 2D semiconductors with band gaps in the near infrared and predicted high carrier mobility. We find that excitation with 800 nm pulses results in long-lived free photocarriers, persisting for hundreds of picoseconds, in GeS and GeSe noribbons. We also demonstrate that zerovalent Cu intercalation is an effective tool for tuning the photoconductive response. Intercalation of ~ 3 atomic % of zerovalent Cu reduces the carrier lifetime in GeSe and GeS. In GeS, it also shortens the photoconductivity rise and improves carrier mobility.
Germanium sulfide (GeS) is a 2D semiconductor with high carrier mobility, a moderate band gap of about 1.6 eV, and highly anisotropic optical properties. In-plane anisotropy and a large in-plane spontaneous electric polarization in GeS monolayers have been predicted to result in significant second order nonlinear effects in response to above-the-gap excitation with photon energy < 2.5 eV1. We have further confirmed it experimentally by demonstrating surface shift current generation in GeS using THz emission spectroscopy with 3.1 eV excitation.3 Here, we use time-resolved THz spectroscopy to investigate the dynamics and lifetimes of photoexcited carriers in GeS single crystals and nanoribbons in response to excitations with energies ranging from 1.5 eV, resonant with the bulk gap, to 3.1 eV. We find that resulting dynamics vary considerably. Lower energy (1.5 eV) excitation injects carriers directly into three low-lying valleys in the conduction band. Those carriers have long, which photoconductivity persisting for over 500 ps, as it can be seen in Fig. 1(a). On the other hand, injecting carriers high into the conduction band results in THz emission due to the shift current as well as into transient photoconductivity that recovers over <100 ps. Pronounced changes in the transient photoconductivity in response to optical excitation with photon energy across the visible-NIR range open intriguing possibilities for applications in ultrafast spectrally-sensitive photodetectors and solar energy conversion.
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