Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics and Bandgap Renormalization in Layered PtSe₂

Carrier interactions in 2D nanostructures are of central importance not only in condensed-matter physics but also for a wide range of optoelectronic and photonic applications. Here, new insights into the behavior of photoinduced carriers in layered platinum diselenide (PtSe₂ ) through ultrafast time-resolved pump-probe and nonlinear optical measurements are presented. The measurements reveal the temporal evolution of carrier relaxation, chemical potential and bandgap renormalization in PtSe₂ . These results imply that few-layer PtSe₂ has a semiconductor-like carrier relaxation instead of a metal-like one. The relaxation follows a triple-exponential decay process and exhibits thickness-dependent relaxation times. This occurs along with a band-filling effect, which can be controlled based on the number of layers and may be applied in saturable absorption for generating ultrafast laser pulses. The findings may provide means to study many-body physics in 2D materials as well as potentially leading to applications in the field of optoelectronics and ultrafast photonics.