Bilayer crystals, formed by stacking monolayers of two-dimensional (2D) crystals, create interlayer potentials that govern excitonic phenomena but are constrained by their fixed covalent lattices. Replacing one layer with an atomically thin molecular crystal overcomes this limitation, as precise control of functional groups enables tunable 2D molecular lattices and, consequently, electronic structures. Here, we report molecular tuning of lattices and excitons in four-atom-thick hybrid bilayer crystals (HBCs), synthesized as monolayers of perylene-based molecular and transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) single crystals. In HBCs, we observe an anisotropic photoluminescence signal exhibiting characteristics of both molecular and TMD excitons, directly tuned by molecular geometry and HBC composition. Ab initio calculations reveal that this anisotropic emission arises from hybrid excitons, which inherit properties from both layers through a hybridized bilayer band structure. Our work establishes a synthetically derived, molecule-based 2D quantum materials platform with the potential for engineering interlayer potentials.
@article{arxiv.2412.12027,
title = {Molecular tuning of excitons in four-atom-thick hybrid bilayer crystals},
author = {Tomojit Chowdhury and Aurélie Champagne and Patrick Knüppel and Zehra Naqvi and Mengyu Gao and Nathan Guisinger and Kin Fai Mak and Jeffrey B. Neaton and Jiwoong Park},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.12027},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This revised version of the paper has undergone substantial modifications, and a portion of these changes has been submitted as a separate work under the ID arXiv:2502.01629