Anomalous hybridized excitons induced by combined effects of Van der Waals coupling and Rashba spin–orbit coupling

As a typical transition-metal dichalcogenide, MoS₂has drawn wide attention due to its good stability and excellent physicochemical properties, making it suitable for visible-region optoelectronic devices. To expand its application, bandgap engineering via heterostructure, thus far, was conventionally employed to tune the band gap. However, this strategy has the disadvantage that energy levels of bands do not show obvious changes compared to the isolated components, limiting the range of applications. Here, we achieve hybridized excitons induced by combined effects of Van der Waals (vdW) coupling and Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC), with a small exciton energy of 0.65 eV. For this purpose, we design a MoS₂/MoWC heterostructure, where a built-in field (due to the absence of mirror symmetry) induces the Rashba SOC and contributes to the anomalous hybridized states, combined with the vdW coupling. An effective model is proposed to demonstrate the anomalous hybridized states for the heterostructure. Our approach reveals a novel mechanics model for hybridized excitons states, providing new physical ways to achieve infrared-region devices.