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    Quantum Confining Excitons with an Electrostatic Moiré Superlattice

    Liuxin Gu1, Lifu Zhang1, Sam Felsenfeld2, Beini Gao2, Rundong Ma3, Suji Park4, Houk Jang4, Takashi Taniguchi5, Kenji Watanabe6 et al.

    You Zhou1,*

    • *Contact author: youzhou@umd.edu

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 026901 – Published 8 July, 2025

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tyr4-9z16

    Abstract

    Quantum confining excitons has been a persistent challenge in the pursuit of strong exciton interactions and quantum light generation. Unlike electrons, which can be readily controlled via electric fields, imposing strong nanoscale potentials on excitons to enable quantum confinement has proven challenging. In this Letter, we utilize piezoelectric force microscopy to image the domain structures of twisted hexagonal boron nitride (h−BN), revealing evidence of strong in-plane electric fields at the domain boundaries. By placing a monolayer MoSe2 only 1 to 2 nm away from the twisted h−BN interface, we observe energy splitting of neutral excitons and Fermi polarons by several millielectronvolts at the moiré domain boundaries. We attribute such observations to excitons confined in a nanoscale one-dimensional electrostatic potential created by the strong in-plane electric fields at the moiré domain boundaries. Intriguingly, this 1D quantum confinement results in pronounced polarization anisotropy in the excitons’ reflection and emission, persistent to temperatures as high as ∼80  K. These findings open new avenues for exploring and controlling strongly interacting excitons for classical and quantum optoelectronics.

    Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

    Corrections

    9 July, 2026

    Correction: The omission of an author’s name in Ref. [32] has been fixed.

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