Hexagonal boron nitride is an indirect bandgap semiconductor

The demand for compact ultraviolet laser devices is increasing, as they are essential in applications such as optical storage, photocatalysis, sterilization, ophthalmic surgery and nanosurgery. Many researchers are devoting considerable effort to finding materials with larger bandgaps than that of GaN. Here we show that hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a promising material for such laser devices because it has a direct bandgap in the ultraviolet region. We obtained a pure hBN single crystal under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, which shows a dominant luminescence peak and a series of s-like exciton absorption bands around 215 nm, proving it to be a direct-bandgap material. Evidence for room-temperature ultraviolet lasing at 215 nm by accelerated electron excitation is provided by the enhancement and narrowing of the longitudinal mode, threshold behaviour of the excitation current dependence of the emission intensity, and a far-field pattern of the transverse mode.

We show that the light-matter interaction in monolayer WSe_{2} is strongly enhanced when the incoming electromagnetic wave is in resonance with the energy of the exciton states of strongly Coulomb bound electron-hole pairs below the electronic band gap. We perform second harmonic generation (SHG) spectroscopy as a function of laser energy and polarization at T=4  K. At the exciton resonance energies we record an enhancement by up to 3 orders of magnitude of the SHG efficiency, due to the unusual combination of electric dipole and magnetic dipole transitions. The energy and parity of the exciton states showing the strong resonance effects are identified in 1- and 2-photon photoluminescence excitation experiments, corroborated by first principles calculations. Targeting the identified exciton states in resonant 2-photon excitation allows us to maximize k-valley coherence and polarization.