Defect Structure of Localized Excitons in a WSe2 Monolayer

The atomic and electronic structure of intrinsic defects in a WSe2 monolayer grown on graphite was revealed by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. Instead of chalcogen vacancies that prevail in other transition metal dichalcogenide materials, intrinsic defects in WSe2 arise surprisingly from single tungsten vacancies, leading to the hole (p-type) doping. Furthermore, we found these defects to dominate the excitonic emission of the WSe2 monolayer at low temperature. Our work provided the first atomic-scale understanding of defect excitons and paved the way toward deciphering the defect structure of single quantum emitters previously discovered in the WSe2 monolayer.