Tailoring light-matter interaction in WS2-gold nanoparticles hybrid systems

Recently, considerable attention has been paid to tune the emission using hybrid systems composed of layered transition-metal dichalcogenides and metal nanoparticles (NPs) since metal NPs have the ability to enhance and localize the incident electromagnetic field. Furthermore, these hybrid systems show great interest from the standpoint of fundamental science as it constitutes an atomic scale prototype of charge-transfer complexes. Here, we realized WS2-gold (Au) NPs hybrids by chemically growing Au NPs at the edges of the mechanically exfoliated bilayer WS2. The Au NPs significantly increase the light-matter interaction which has been studied through Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. A substantial enhancement of the PL intensity in the WS2-Au composite concerning the pristine WS2 has been observed, and it increases as the number and size of the Au NPs on WS2 is increased. Geometry-dependent modification of plasmon resonance energy of Au NP alters the coupling strength between the emission pathways of WS2 and the plasmon which is manifested by a change in relative intensity between trion (X-) and exciton (X) emissions. We probe the mechanism of the PL intensity modulation through polarization-dependent measurements and simulation. We have demonstrated that, in WS2, the internal quantum efficiency increases and activation energy decreases due to coupling with Au NPs. Compared to pristine WS2, a faster change in optical band gap with temperature in WS2-Au may be due to enhancing electron-phonon interaction and lattice expansion in the latter. Our paper indicates the possibility to develop high performance transition-metal dichalcogenide-based photonic devices