Argonne National Laboratory

Research Highlight | Center for Nanoscale Materials

Quenching Defect Photoluminescence in Monolayer MoS2
In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers demonstrate quench defect-related photoluminescence for single-photon emitter of monolayer molybdenum dioxide.
Quenching of defect photluminesence depends on the MPc metal, with the quenching efficiency decreasing in the order CoPc > CuPc > ZnPc, and almost no quenching by metal-free H₂Pc.

Scientific Achievement

This study demonstrates metallophthalocyanines (MPc) quench defect-related photoluminescence in MoS2 monolayers. The MPc complexes stabilize dark, negatively charged defects over luminescent neutral defects via an electrostatic local gating effect.

Significance and Impact

The results suggest attractive routes for photo-luminescent manipulation and could have applications in flexible electronics, sensors, photovoltaics, catalysts, and neuromorphic computing.

Research Details

  • Modeling and experimental results demonstrate the control of defect-based excited-state decay pathways via molecular passivation.
  • First-principles computations were performed using Carbon, a high-performance computing cluster in CNM.

Work was performed in part at CNM.

DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c07795

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