WSe<sub>2</sub> as Transparent Top Gate for Infrared Near-Field Microscopy.

Hesp, Niels C H; Svendsen, Mark Kamper; Watanabe, Kenji; Taniguchi, Takashi; Thygesen, Kristian S; Torre, Iacopo; Koppens, Frank H L · Nano Lett · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Independent control of carrier density and out-of-plane displacement field is essential for accessing novel phenomena in two-dimensional (2D) material heterostructures. While this is achieved with independent top and bottom metallic gate electrodes in transport experiments, it remains a challenge for near-field optical studies as the top electrode interferes with the optical path. Here, we characterize the requirements for a material to be used as the top-gate electrode and demonstrate experimentally that few-layer WSe<sub>2</sub> can be used as a transparent, ambipolar top-gate electrode in infrared near-field microscopy. We carry out nanoimaging of plasmons in a bilayer graphene heterostructure tuning the plasmon wavelength using a trilayer WSe<sub>2</sub> gate, achieving a density modulation amplitude exceeding 2 × 10<sup>12</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>. The observed ambipolar gate-voltage response allows us to extract the energy gap of WSe<sub>2</sub>, yielding a value of 1.05 eV. Our results provide an additional tuning knob to cryogenic near-field experiments on emerging phenomena in 2D materials and moiré heterostructures.