Direct and Indirect Interlayer Excitons in a van der Waals Heterostructure of hBN/WS2/MoS2/hBN

A van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure composed of multivalley systems can show excitonic optical responses from interlayer excitons that originate from several valleys in the electronic structure. In this work, we studied photoluminescence (PL) from a vdW heterostructure, WS₂/MoS₂, deposited on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) flakes. PL spectra from the fabricated heterostructures observed at room temperature show PL peaks at 1.3-1.7 eV, which are absent in the PL spectra of WS₂ or MoS₂ monolayers alone. The low-energy PL peaks we observed can be decomposed into three distinct peaks. Through detailed PL measurements and theoretical analysis, including PL imaging, time-resolved PL measurements, and calculation of dielectric function ε(ω) by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation with G₀ W₀, we concluded that the three PL peaks originate from direct K-K interlayer excitons, indirect Q-Γ interlayer excitons, and indirect K-Γ interlayer excitons.