Optical Control of Spin Polarization in Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Optical excitation could generate electrons' spin polarization in some semiconductors with the control of the field polarization. In this article, we report a series of spin-resolved photocurrent experiments on monolayer tungsten disulfide. The experiments demonstrate that the optical excitations with the same helicity could generate opposite spin polarization around the Fermi level by tuning the excitation energy. The mechanism lies in the valley-dependent optical selection rules, the giant spin-orbit coupling, and spin-valley locking in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). These exotic features make monolayer TMDs promising candidates for conceptual semiconductor-based spintronics.