Enhanced bulk photovoltaic effect in strained 3R-MoS₂

Bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) is attracting much attention due to its innate coupling with wave function geometry and potential to achieve a higher solar energy conversion efficiency. So far, BPVE has been studied in a variety of materials, such as oxide superlattices¹, halide perovskites², organics³, Weyl semimetals⁴ and van der Waals nanomaterials⁵. Meanwhile, several methods are also developed to optimize the performance of BPVE^6,7. Among them, strain is a simple but effective way⁷ for obtaining the enhanced photovoltaic signals. In this study, we focused on the effect of strain on the bulk photovoltaic property in layered 3R-MoS₂, which has a noncentrosymmetric crystal structure whose symmetries can be modified by uniaxial strain. We found the giant enhancement of the bulk photovoltaic effect in strained 3R-MoS₂, which can be attributed to the emergence of the strain-induced in-plane polarization⁸. In the presentation, we report the detailed photovoltaic behaviors such as directional dependence, photon energy dependence, and strain dependence. Possible mechanism will also be discussed.



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