Giant Stark Effect in Two-Dimensional Hittorf’s Phosphorene

Abstract

The electric field tunable band gap and optical properties in low-dimensional materials (quantum-confined Stark effect) are very useful in applications of optoelectronics. In this paper, based on the many-body perturbation method, we investigate the evolution of the quasiparticle electronic structure, exciton, and optical properties of two-dimensional (2D) Hittorf's phosphorene under an out-of-plane electric field. Compared to other 2D monolayers, the relatively large thickness of Hittorf's phosphorene leads to a significant reduction in the quasiparticle band gap when an electric field is applied along the quantum confinement direction. The unique bilayer structure, on the other hand, guarantees a well spatial separation of photon-excited electron-hole pairs and, consequently, reduced exciton binding energy under an out-of-plane electric field. These combined effects lead to an almost fixed exciton energy and optical absorption edge at low applied electric fields. However, when the field is larger than 0.1 V/\AA{}, substantial reductions in the exciton energy and optical absorption edge are identified. For the higher-order exciton states, the involvement of more complex band-to-band electron-hole pair formation results in a nonmonotonic electric field dependence. The effective optical modulation accompanied with these giant Stark effects shows potential applications of Hittorf's phosphorene in 2D optoelectronic devices.