Ultrasensitive Circularly Polarized Photon Detectors Based on Chiral Two-Dimensional MoS2

ACS Nano. 2025 Nov 4;19(43):37919-37928. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.5c12182. Epub 2025 Oct 23.

Abstract

Engineering chiral optical and electronic properties of materials is interesting for applications in sensing and quantum information. State-of-the-art chiral optoelectronic devices are mostly based on three-dimensional (3D) and quasi-two-dimensional (2D) materials. Here we demonstrate chiral 2D MoS2 with sub-nanometer thickness via chirality transfer from l-/d-penicillamine (l-/d-PEN). We report a giant molar ellipticity of 108 deg·cm2/dmol in monolayer solid-state films, up to 3 orders of magnitude higher than 3D chiral materials. Phototransistors with chiral 2D MoS2 channels exhibit gate-tunable circularly polarized light detection with responsivity of >102 A/W and anisotropy g-factor of 1.98, close to the theoretical maximum of 2.0. The reduced dimensionality magnifies the chirality transfer efficiency, allowing realization of ultrasensitive detectors for circularly polarized photons.

Keywords: Two-dimensional materials; chirality; circular dichroism; circularly polarized light; transition metal dichalcogenides.