Engineering Dielectric Screening for Potential-well Arrays of Excitons in 2D Materials

Tailoring of the band gap in semiconductors is essential for the development of novel devices. In standard semiconductors, this modulation is generally achieved through highly energetic ion implantation. In two-dimensional (2D) materials, the photophysical properties are strongly sensitive to the surrounding dielectric environment presenting novel opportunities through van der Waals heterostructures encompassing atomically thin high-κ dielectrics. Here, we demonstrate a giant tuning of the exciton binding energy of the monolayer WSe₂ as a function of the dielectric environment. Upon increasing the average dielectric constant from 2.4 to 15, the exciton binding energy is reduced by as much as 300 meV in ambient conditions. The experimentally determined exciton binding energies are in excellent agreement with the theoretical values predicted from a Mott-Wannier exciton model with parameters derived from first-principles calculations. Finally, we show how texturing of the dielectric environment can be used to realize potential-well arrays for excitons in 2D materials, which is a first step toward exciton metamaterials.