Recoil Effect and Photoemission Splitting of Trions in Monolayer MoS₂

The 2D geometry nature and low dielectric constant in transition-metal dichalcogenides lead to easily formed strongly bound excitons and trions. Here, we studied the photoluminescence of van der Waals heterostructures of monolayer MoS₂ and graphene at room temperature and observed two photoluminescence peaks that are associated with trion emission. Further study of different heterostructure configurations confirms that these two peaks are intrinsic to MoS₂ and originate from a bound state and Fermi level, respectively, of which both accept recoiled electrons from trion recombination. We demonstrate that the recoil effect allows us to electrically control the photon energy of trion emission by adjusting the gate voltage. In addition, significant thermal smearing at room temperature results in capture of recoil electrons by bound states, creating photoemission peak at low doping level whose photon energy is less sensitive to gate voltage tuning. This discovery reveals an unexpected role of bound states for photoemission, where binding of recoil electrons becomes important.