Wavelike, collective oscillations of electrons known as "plasmons" are very important for determining the optical and electronic properties of metals.
In atomically thin 2-D materials, plasmons have an energy that is more useful for applications, including sensors and communication devices, than plasmons found in bulk metals. But determining how long plasmons live and whether their energy and other properties can be controlled at the nanoscale (billionths of a meter) has eluded many.
Now, as reported in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers co-led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)—with support from the Department of Energy's Center for Computational Study of Excited-State Phenomena in Energy Materials (C2SEPEM)—has observed long-lived plasmons in a new class of conducting transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) called "quasi 2-D crystals."
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