We examine different cases of heterostructures consisting of WS2 monolayers grown by chemical vapor deposition as the optically active material. We show that the degree of valley polarization of WS2 is considerably influenced by the material type used to form the heterostructure. Our results suggest that the interaction between WS2 and graphene (WS2/Gr) has a strong effect on the temperature-dependent depolarization (i.e., decrease in polarization with increasing temperature), with polarization degrees reaching 24% at room temperature under near-resonant excitation. This contrasts with hBN-encapsulated WS2, which exhibits a room temperature polarization degree of only 11%. The observed low depolarization rate in the WS2/Gr heterostructure is attributed to the nearly temperature independent scattering rate due to phonons and fast charge and energy transfer processes from WS2 to graphene. Significant variations in the degree of polarization are also observed at 4 K between the different heterostructure configurations. Intervalley hole scattering in the valence band proximity between the K and Γ points of WS2 is sensitive to the immediate environment, leading to the observed variations.

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This work presents a comprehensive numerical study for designing a lead-free, all-inorganic, and high-performance solar cell based on Cs2TiI6 halide perovskite with all-inorganic carrier transport layers. A rigorous ab initio density-functional theory (DFT) calculation is performed to identify the electronic and optical properties of Cs2TiI6 and, upon extraction of the existing experimental data of the material, the cell is designed and optimized to the degree of practical feasibility. Consequently, a theoretical power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 21.17% is reported with inorganic TiO2 and CuI as carrier transport layers. The calculated absorption coefficient of Cs2TiI6 reveals its enormous potential as an alternative low-bandgap material for different solar cell applications. Furthermore, the role of different point defects and the corresponding defect densities on cell performance are investigated. It is found that the possible point defects in Cs2TiI6 can form both the shallow and deep defect states, with deep defect states having a prominent effect on cell performance. For both defect states, the cell performance deteriorates significantly as the defect density increases, which signifies the importance of high-quality material processing for the success of Cs2TiI6-based perovskite solar cell technology.

The aim of this report is to unfold how the thermo-electric spin-polarized current in a transverse-biased zigzag graphene nanoribbon changes in the presence of uniaxial deformations and uniform perpendicular magnetic field. Employing the two-parameter Hubbard model along with the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism, we found that both uniaxial strain and magnetic field can significantly modulate the bandgap, local distribution of edge states, and the critical transverse electric field needed to achieve the half-metallic phase in the ribbon. Our analysis shows a significant enhancement of the maximum attainable spin-polarized current as functions of both source temperature and contacts temperature difference, with increasing the magnetic field or applying any magnitude of compressive strain. Furthermore, it is shown that the magneto-resistance ratio of the device, can be drastically tuned via strain engineering, reaching values as high as 2 × 104% for compressive strains of 5% magnitude.

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