Mechanisms and applications of steady-state photoluminescence spectroscopy in two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides

Two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors exhibit many important structural and optoelectronic properties, such as strong light- matter interactions, direct bandgaps tunable from visible to near-infrared regions, flexibility and atomic thickness, quantum-confinement effects, valley polarization possibilities, and so on. Therefore, they are regarded as a very promising class of materials for next-generation state-of-the-art nano/micro optoelectronic devices. To explore different applications and device structures based on 2D TMDs, intrinsic material properties, their relationships, and evolutions with fabrication parameters need to be deeply understood, very often through a combination of various characterization techniques. Among them, steady-state photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy has been extensively employed. This class of techniques is fast, contactless, and nondestructive and can provide very high spatial resolution. Therefore, it can be used to obtain optoelectronic properties from samples of various sizes (from microns to centimeters) during the fabrication process without complex sample preparation. In this article, the mechanism and applications of steady-state PL spectroscopy in 2D TMDs are reviewed. The first part of this review details the physics of PL phenomena in semiconductors and common techniques to acquire and analyze PL spectra. The second part introduces various applications of PL spectroscopy in 2D TMDs. Finally, a broader perspective is discussed to highlight some limitations and untapped opportunities of PL spectroscopy in characterizing 2D TMDs.