Monolayer Semiconductor Auger Detector Authors: Colin M. Chow1, Hongyi Yu2,3, John R. Schaibley1,4, Pasqual Rivera1, Joseph Finney1, Jiaqiang Yan5, David G. Mandrus5,6, Takashi Taniguchi7, Kenji Watanabe7, Wang Yao3, David H. Cobden1*, Xiaodong Xu1,8* 1Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. 2Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Metrology and Sensing & School of Physics and Astronomy, Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhuhai Campus), Zhuhai 519082, China. 3Department of Physics and Centre of Theoretical and Computational Physics, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. 4Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. 5Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA. 6Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA. 7National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. 8Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA *email:
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract Auger recombination in semiconductors is a many-body phenomenon in which recombination of electrons and holes is accompanied by excitation of other charge carriers. Being nonradiative, it is detrimental to light emission. The excess energy of the excited carriers is normally rapidly converted to heat, making Auger processes difficult to probe directly. Here, we employ a technique in which the Auger-excited carriers are detected by their ability to tunnel out of the semiconductor through a thin barrier, generating a current. We employ vertical van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures with monolayer WSe2 as the semiconductor and the wide band gap hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as the tunnel barrier to preferentially transmit high-energy Auger-excited carriers to a graphite electrode.