Gate-tunable quantum-mechanical tunnelling of particles between a quantum confined state and a nearbyFermi reservoir of delocalized states has underpinned many advances in spintronics and solid-state quantum optics. The prototypical example is a semiconductor quantum dot separated from a gated contact by a tunnel barrier. This enables Coulomb blockade, the phenomenon whereby electrons or holes can be loaded one-by-one into a quantum dot 1,2 . Depending on the tunnel-coupling strength 3,4 , this capability facilitates single spin quantum bits 1,2,5 or coherent many-body interactions between the confined spin and the Fermi reservoir 6,7 . Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures, in which a wide range of unique atomic layers can easily be combined, offer novel prospects to engineer coherent quantum confined spins 8,9 , tunnel barriers down to the atomic limit 10 or a Fermi reservoir beyond the conventional flat density of states 11 . However, gatecontrol of vdW nanostructures 12-16 at the single particle level is needed to unlock their potential. Here we report Coulomb blockade in a vdW heterostructure consisting of a transition metal dichalcogenide quantum dot coupled to a graphene contact through an atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) tunnel barrier. Thanks to a tunable Fermi reservoir, we can deterministically load either a single electron or a single hole into the quantum dot. We observe hybrid excitons, composed of localized quantum dot states and delocalized continuum states, arising from ultra-strong spin-conserving tunnel coupling through the atomically thin tunnel barrier. Probing the charged excitons in applied magnetic fields, we observe large gyromagnetic ratios (∼8). Our results establish a foundation for engineering next-generation devices to investigate either novel regimes of Kondo physics or isolated quantum bits in a vdW heterostructure platform.
Supplementary Figure 5. Lineshape evolution of the excitons states as a function of the gate voltage.Photoluminescence spectra of quantum dots A and B for different applied gate voltage values measured at T = 3.8 K. The green and red labels indicate the charged exciton states for quantum dots A and B, respectively. Labels X 1-, X 0 , X 1+ and X H represent the negatively charged, neutral, positively charged and hybrid excitons, respectively. For comparison purposes, some spectra have been multiplied by the corresponding factors indicated at the left part of the figure.