{"id":121604,"date":"2021-04-16T00:22:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T07:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/quantum-dot-array-could-make-ultralow-energy-switches"},"modified":"2021-04-16T00:22:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T07:22:57","slug":"quantum-dot-array-could-make-ultralow-energy-switches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/quantum-dot-array-could-make-ultralow-energy-switches","title":{"rendered":"Quantum dot array could make ultralow-energy switches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-dot-array-could-make-ultralow-energy-switches.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Physics World<\/i><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Interactions between matter and light in microcavities made of mirrors are fundamentally important for many modern technologies, including lasers. Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, US, have now gained tighter control of these interactions by exploiting a nonlinear effect that occurs in a new kind of hybrid semiconductor made from bilayers of two-dimensional materials. These semiconducting sheets form an egg-carton-like array in which the \u201cpockets\u201d are quantum dots that can be controlled using light, and they could be used to make ultralow-energy switches.<\/p>\n<p>Led by <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/deng-lab\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hui Deng<\/a>, the researchers made their hybrid semiconductor from flakes of tungsten disulphide (WS<sub>2<\/sub>) and molybdenum diselenide (MoSe<sub>2<\/sub>) just a few atoms thick. In their bulk form, these transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) act as indirect band-gap semiconductors. When scaled down to a monolayer thickness, however, they behave as direct band-gap semiconductors, capable of efficiently absorbing and emitting light.<\/p>\n<p>When laid on top of one another, the electronic structures of TMDCs can form a larger electron lattice (known as a moir\u00e9 lattice) thanks to the slight mismatch of the materials\u2019 lattice constants. The period of this lattice can be tuned by twisting the monolayers with respect to each other at different angles. In the WS<sub>2<\/sub> and MoSe<sub>2<\/sub> bilayer studied in this work, this angle is about 56.5\u00b0 and the moir\u00e9 lattice produced contains \u201cpockets\u201d measuring around 10 atoms across. These pockets, explains study lead author Long Zhang, are the quantum dots \u2013 tiny pieces of semiconducting materials that can isolate individual quantum particles such as electrons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physics World Interactions between matter and light in microcavities made of mirrors are fundamentally important for many modern technologies, including lasers. Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, US, have now gained tighter control of these interactions by exploiting a nonlinear effect that occurs in a new kind of hybrid semiconductor made from bilayers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}