A research team has achieved efficient transport of indirect excitons in a van der Waals heterostructure, marking a significant advance in manipulating these quasiparticles. Indirect excitons, formed by an electron and a hole in separate layers of two-dimensional materials, possess a long lifetime and a permanent electric dipole moment, making them promising for applications in optoelectronics, quantum computing, and sensing. However, their efficient transport over long distances has been a persistent challenge due to scattering and non-radiative recombination.

The study focused on a heterostructure composed of two molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) monolayers separated by an insulating layer of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Through optical excitation, indirect excitons were generated in this structure. The researchers observed that these excitons could propagate micrometric distances with remarkably high efficiency, overcoming the limitations of previous systems. This achievement is attributed to the optimization of interface quality and the suppression of defects that act as traps for excitons.

The ability to efficiently transport indirect excitons opens new avenues for the development of exciton-based optoelectronic devices, such as high-efficiency light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodetectors, as well as for the creation of excitonic circuits. Furthermore, the long coherence of these excitons makes them attractive candidates for qubits in quantum computing. This advance lays the groundwork for exploring collective quantum phenomena and designing more complex device architectures, driving the field of "excitonics" in 2D materials.