Transition metal monochalcogenides comprise a class of two-dimensional materials with electronic band gaps that are highly sensitive to material thickness and chemical composition. Here, we explore the tunability of the electronic excitation spectrum in GaSe using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The electronic structure of the material is modified by in-situ potassium deposition as well as by forming GaSxSe1−x alloy compounds. We find that potassium decouples the top-most tetra-layer of the GaSe unit cell, leading to a substantial change of the dispersion around the valence band maximum (VBM). The observed band dispersion of a single tetralayer is consistent with a transition from the direct gap character of the bulk to the indirect gap character expected for monolayer GaSe. Upon alloying with sulfur, we observe a phase transition from AB to AA′ stacking. Alloying also results in a rigid energy shift of the VBM towards higher binding energies which correlates with a blue shift in the luminescence. The increase of the band gap upon sulfur alloying does not appear to change the dispersion or character of the VBM appreciably, implying that it is possible to engineer the gap of these materials while maintaining their salient electronic properties.
@article{arxiv.1908.01003,
title = {Tunable Electronic Structure in Gallium Chalcogenide van der Waals Compounds},
author = {Brian Shevitski and Søren Ulstrup and Roland J. Koch and Hui Cai and Sefaattin Tongay and Luca Moreschini and Chris Jozwiak and Aaron Bostwick and Alex Zettl and Eli Rotenberg and Shaul Aloni},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.01003},
year = {2019}
}