Robust valley-polarized excitonic Mott states and doublons enabled by stacking-controlled moiré geometry

Atomically-thin moiré superlattices offer an optically accessible platform for interacting bosons, where strong onsite repulsion $U_{xx}$ suppresses double occupancy and supports excitonic Mott states at unit filling. However, moiré confinement also enhances phonon- and disorder-assisted relaxation, challenging the robustness of these correlated states under dissipation. Here we show that strengthening the intersite exciton repulsion $V_{xx}$ between neighboring moiré cells offers a distinct route to stabilizing unit-filling excitonic Mott states. In H-stacked WSe2/WS2, moiré confinement endows interlayer excitons with an out-of-plane dipole and a pronounced in-plane quadrupolar charge distribution. Helicity-resolved transient photoluminescence, supported by first-principles-informed modelling, reveals that this quadrupolar geometry increases $V_{xx}$ at unit filling by at least a factor of two relative to the dipolar R-stacked excitons. Despite a slight reduction in $U_{xx}$, the enhanced $V_{xx}$ yields a long-lived, valley-polarized excitonic Mott state at unit filling that persists for ~12 ns - more than twice as long as in R-stacks - and remains robust up to ~50 K. Beyond unit filling, the same geometry supports valley-polarized doublons with fourfold longer lifetimes than in R-stacks. These results establish moiré-geometric control of intersite interactions as a route to stabilizing excitonic Mott states and doublons against dissipation in solids.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2026-09-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77907-0
Primary Topic
2D Materials and Applications
Type
article
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article

Robust valley-polarized excitonic Mott states and doublons enabled by stacking-controlled moiré geometry

Si-Jie Chang, Seth Ariel Tongay, Yunbo Ou, Kenji Watanabe et al.
Nature Communications
2D Materials and Applications
article

Robust valley-polarized excitonic Mott states and doublons enabled by stacking-controlled moiré geometry

Si-Jie Chang, Seth Ariel Tongay, Yunbo Ou, Kenji Watanabe, Ting Cao, Shou-Chien Chiu, Meng-Che Yeh, Jie-Yong Zeng, Yu-Wei Hsieh, Xiao-Wei Zhang, Takashi Taniguchi, Po-Chun Huang, Jia-Sian Su, Hao-Tien Chu, Chaw-Keong Yong
article en

Abstract

Atomically-thin moiré superlattices offer an optically accessible platform for interacting bosons, where strong onsite repulsion $U_{xx}$ suppresses double occupancy and supports excitonic Mott states at unit filling. However, moiré confinement also enhances phonon- and disorder-assisted relaxation, challenging the robustness of these correlated states under dissipation. Here we show that strengthening the intersite exciton repulsion $V_{xx}$ between neighboring moiré cells offers a distinct route to stabilizing unit-filling excitonic Mott states. In H-stacked WSe2/WS2, moiré confinement endows interlayer excitons with an out-of-plane dipole and a pronounced in-plane quadrupolar charge distribution. Helicity-resolved transient photoluminescence, supported by first-principles-informed modelling, reveals that this quadrupolar geometry increases $V_{xx}$ at unit filling by at least a factor of two relative to the dipolar R-stacked excitons. Despite a slight reduction in $U_{xx}$, the enhanced $V_{xx}$ yields a long-lived, valley-polarized excitonic Mott state at unit filling that persists for ~12 ns - more than twice as long as in R-stacks - and remains robust up to ~50 K. Beyond unit filling, the same geometry supports valley-polarized doublons with fourfold longer lifetimes than in R-stacks. These results establish moiré-geometric control of intersite interactions as a route to stabilizing excitonic Mott states and doublons against dissipation in solids.

Nature Communications
Openalex Percentile: Top 83%
2D Materials and Applications
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Robust valley-polarized excitonic Mott states and doublons enabled by stacking-controlled moiré geometry — Si-Jie Chang, Seth Ariel Tongay, et al. · Nature Communications (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS