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Updated: Feb 21, 2026

Probe Type II Band Alignment in One-Dimensional Van Der Waals Heterostructures Using First-Principles Calculations
Published on: October 12, 2019
Tunable Electronic Energy Level Alignment and Exciton Diversity in Organic-Inorganic van der Waals Heterostructures
Aurélie Champagne1,2,3, Olugbenga Adeniran4, Jonah B Haber5
1Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
None:
van der Waals stacking of two-dimensional (2D) materials offers a powerful platform for engineering material interfaces with tailored electronic and optical properties. While most van der Waals multilayers have featured inorganic monolayers, incorporating molecular monolayers introduces additional degrees of tunability and functionality. Here, we investigate hybrid bilayers composed of atomically thin perylene-based molecular crystals interfaced with monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), specifically MoS2 and WS2. Using the ab initio many-body perturbation theory within the GW approximation and the Bethe-Salpeter equation approach, we predict emergent properties beyond those of the isolated constituent systems. Notably, we find substantial renormalization of monolayer molecular crystal band gap due to TMD-induced polarization. Furthermore, by varying the TMD monolayer, we demonstrate tuning of the energy level alignment of the bilayer and subsequent control over a diversity of lowest-energy excitons, which include strongly bound hybrid excitons and long-lived charge-transfer excitons. These findings establish organic-inorganic van der Waals heterostructures as a promising class of materials for tunable optoelectronic devices and quantum excitonic phenomena, expanding the design space for low-dimensional systems.
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