2D Material Combines Long Lifetime with Freedom of Movement

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have developed a method to isolate thin layers of tungsten diselenide (WSe2) — a 2D material — from crystals, to allow layers of WSe2 to be stacked on top of other atomically thin materials such as boron nitride and graphene. The discovery could further the use of WSe2 for building smaller, more efficient computing devices. When the WSe2 layer is sandwiched between two boron nitride flakes and interacts with light, an exciton is formed. The exciton in the WSe2 contains a property known as “valley spin”— an expanded degree of freedom of movement that could be useful in the building of quantum computing devices. However, excitons usually do not have a...