Polaronic Trions at the MoS2/SrTiO3 Interface

The reduced electrical screening in 2D materials provides an ideal platform for realization of exotic quasiparticles, that are robust and whose functionalities can be exploited for future electronic, optoelectronic, and valleytronic applications. Recent examples include an interlayer exciton, where an electron from one layer binds with a hole from another, and a Holstein polaron, formed by an electron dressed by a sea of phonons. Here, a new quasiparticle is reported, polaronic trion in a heterostructure of MoS2/SrTiO3 (STO). This emerges as the Frohlich bound state of the trion in the atomically thin monolayer of MoS2 and the very unique low energy soft phonon mode (<= 7 meV, which is temperature and field tunable) in the quantum paraelectric substrate STO, arising below its structural antiferrodistortive (AFD) phase transition temperature. This dressing of the trion with soft phonons manifests in an anomalous temperature dependence of photoluminescence emission leading to a huge enhancement of the trion binding energy (approximate to 70 meV). The soft phonons in STO are sensitive to electric field, which enables field control of the interfacial trion-phonon coupling and resultant polaronic trion binding energy. Polaronic trions could provide a platform to realize quasiparticle-based tunable optoelectronic applications driven by many body effects.