Ozone Intercalation of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterostructures Enhances Photoluminescence Efficiency for Potential Light Emitters

The suppression of quantum efficiency of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterostructures (HS) with type II band alignment leads to severe restriction of integration-based optoelectronic and photovoltaic application development. To address this issue, we have successfully adopted ozone intercalation to manage the photoluminescence (PL) emission efficiency in TMDs HS with a type II band alignment. By controlling the amount of ozone introduced, we can regulate the fluorescence from strong quenching to effective enhancement. We propose that the PL intensity modulation of the TMDs HS area, with 2 orders of magnitude of controllability, can be ascribed to the inhibitory effect of ozone on the formation of interlayer excitons and the combination of charge transfer between the materials. Furthermore, this manipulation method for HS has been proven to have a strong universality. Our findings pave a viable way for achieving quantum efficiency manipulation of HS integration-based optical devices with complete tunability, including wavelength-tunable light emitters.