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Exciton polaritons in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (monolayer TMDCs) have emerged as a promising candidate to enable topological transport, ultra-efficient laser technologies, and collective quantum phenomena such as polariton condensation and superfluidity at room temperature. However, integrating monolayer TMDCs into high-quality planar microcavities to achieve the required strong coupling between the cavity photons and the TMDC excitons (bound electron–hole pairs) has proven challenging. Previous approaches to integration had to compromise between various adverse effects on the strength of light–matter interactions in the monolayer, the cavity photon lifetime, and the lateral size of the microcavity. Here, we demonstrate a scalable approach to fabricate high-quality planar microcavities with an integrated monolayer WS2 layer-by-layer by using polymethyl methacrylate/silicon oxide (PMMA/SiOx) as a cavity spacer. Because the exciton oscillator strength is well protected against the required processing steps by the PMMA layer, the microcavities investigated in this work, which have quality factors of above 103, can operate in the strong light–matter coupling regime at room temperature. This is an important step toward fabricating wafer-scale and patterned microcavities for engineering the exciton-polariton potential landscape, which is essential for enabling many proposed technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effects of direct deposition of different dielectric materials (AlOx, SiOx, SiNx) onto atomically thin TMDC WS2 on its optical response using atomic layer deposition (ALD), electron beam evaporation (EBE), plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), and magnetron sputtering. The photoluminescence measurements reveal quenching of the excitonic emission after all deposition processes, which is linked to the increased level of charge doping and associated rise of the trion emission and/or the localized (bound) exciton emission. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopy allows us to clearly correlate the observed changes in excitonic emission with the increased levels of lattice disorder and defects. In particular, we show that the different doping levels in a monolayer WS2 capped by a dielectric material are strongly related to the defects in the WS2 crystal introduced by all capping methods, except for ALD. The strong charge doping in the ALD-capped sample seems to be caused by other factors, such as deviations in the dielectric layer stoichiometry or chemical reactions on the monolayer surface, which makes ALD distinct from all other techniques. Overall, the EBE process results in the lowest level of doping and defect densities and in the largest spectral weight of the exciton emission in the PL. Sputtering is revealed as the most aggressive dielectric capping method for WS2, fully quenching its optical response. Our results demonstrate and quantify the effects of direct deposition of dielectric materials onto monolayer WS2, which can provide valuable guidance for the efforts to integrate monolayer TMDCs into functional optoelectronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]