Large excitonic effects in group-IV sulfide monolayers

Large exciton binding energies are a distinguishing feature of two-dimensional semiconductors because of reduced screening, potentially leading to unique optoelectronic applications. Here we use electronic structure methods to calculate the properties of a two-dimensional material class: group-IV monosulfides including SiS, GeS, and SnS. Bulk SiS is predicted to be a metastable layered material. Quasiparticle excitations are calculated with the G0W0 method and the Bethe-Salpeter equation is are used to include electron-hole interactions. For monolayers, strongly bound excitons are found below the quasiparticle absorption edge. The predicted excitonic binding energies are as high as 0.7 eV. Due to large excitonic effects, these group-IV sulfide monolayers have great potential for nanoscale optoelectronic applications.