Room-temperature unidirectional routing of valley excitons of monolayer WSe₂ via plasmonic near-field interference in symmetric nano-slits

Abstract Due to the short valley polarization time, it is hardly to separate opposite valley pseudospin of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) for their practical applications in valleytronics. Coupling TMDs to unidirectional surface plasmon polariton (SPP) can overcome this obstacle. However, it is required to break the symmetry to induce the asymmetric coupling between valley exciton dipole and SPP to route valley exciton in previously proposed strategies. Herein, by utilizing a new mechanism that near-field interference can create directional SPP in symmetric nanostructures, we realize directional routing of valley exciton emission of monolayer WSe 2 at room temperature with a symmetric nano-slits array. The near-field interference enabled directional SPP in our device not only render the exciton diffusion length increase from 0.9 to 3.0 μm, but also lead to a valley exciton separation length of 0.7 μm with degree of valley polarization up to 22 %. This valley excitons separation is attributed to the non-flat WSe 2 in the nano-slits region, which makes the exciton dipoles present in-plane and out-of-plane simultaneously. Our work provides a convenient and promising strategy towards room temperature on-chip integrated valleytronic devices.