Decelerated Hot Carrier Cooling in Graphene <i>via</i> Nondissipative Carrier Injection from MoS₂

Abstract

One key to improve the performance of advanced optoelectronic devices and energy harvesting in graphene is to understand the predominant carrier scattering <i>via</i> optical phonons. Nevertheless, low light absorbance in graphene yields a limited photoexcited carrier density, hampering the hot carrier effect, which is strongly correlated to the hot optical phonon bottleneck effect as the energy-loss channel. Here, by integrating graphene with monolayer MoS₂ possessing stronger light absorbance, we demonstrate an efficient interfacial hot carrier transfer between graphene and MoS₂ in their heterostructure with a prolonged relaxation time using broadband transient differential transmittance spectroscopy. We observe that the carrier relaxation time of graphene in the heterostructure is 4 times slower than that of bare graphene. This is explained by nondissipative interlayer transfer from MoS₂ to graphene, which is attributed to the enhanced hot optical phonon bottleneck effect of graphene in the heterostructure by an increased photoexcited carrier population. A significant reduction of both amplitude and relaxation time in A- and B-excitons is another evidence of the interlayer transfer from MoS₂ to graphene. The nondissipative interlayer charge transfer from MoS₂ to graphene is confirmed by density functional calculations. This provides a different platform to further study the photoinduced hot carrier effect in graphene heterostructures for photothermoelectric detectors or hot carrier solar cells.