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Title: Emergence of Interfacial Polarons from Electron–Phonon Coupling in Graphene/h-BN van der Waals Heterostructures

Journal Article · · Nano Letters
ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [2];  [2];  [5];  [6];  [2];  [1]
  1. Synchrotron SOLEIL and Univ. Paris-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette Cedex (France)
  2. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
  3. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Bath, Bath (United Kingdom)
  5. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  6. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States)

van der Waals heterostructures, vertical stacks of layered materials, offer new opportunities for novel quantum phenomena which are absent in their constituent components. Here we report the emergence of polaron quasiparticles at the interface of graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) heterostructures. Using nanospot angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we observe zone-corner replicas of h-BN valence band maxima, with energy spacing coincident with the highest phonon energy of the heterostructure, an indication of Fröhlich polaron formation due to forward-scattering electron–phonon coupling. Parabolic fitting of the h-BN bands yields an effective mass enhancement of ~2.3, suggesting an intermediate coupling strength. Our theoretical simulations based on Migdal–Eliashberg theory corroborate the experimental results, allowing the extraction of microscopic physical parameters. Moreover, renormalization of graphene π-band is observed due to the hybridization with the h-BN band. Our work generalizes the polaron study from transition metal oxides to van der Waals heterostructures with higher material flexibility, highlighting interlayer coupling as an extra degree of freedom to explore emergent phenomena.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
Grant/Contract Number:
2013CB934500; AC02-76SF00515; 61325021; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1461624
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1484748
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 18, Issue 2; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 44 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (11)

Electron-polaron—electron-polaron bound states in mass-gap graphene-like planar quantum electrodynamics: s-wave bipolarons journal October 2018
Revealing exciton masses and dielectric properties of monolayer semiconductors with high magnetic fields journal September 2019
Intervalley polaron in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides journal July 2019
Strong interfacial interactions induced a large reduction in lateral thermal conductivity of transition-metal dichalcogenide superlattices journal January 2019
Nanospot angle-resolved photoemission study of Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene on hexagonal boron nitride: Band structure and local variation of lattice alignment journal April 2019
Large local lattice expansion in graphene adlayers grown on copper journal April 2018
Ab initio theory of polarons: Formalism and applications journal June 2019
Electron-polaron--electron-polaron bound states in mass-gap graphene-like planar quantum electrodynamics: $s$-wave bipolarons text January 2017
Nanospot Angle-Resolved Photoemission Study of Bernal-Stacked Bilayer Graphene on Hexagonal Boron Nitride: Band Structure and Local Variation of Lattice Alignment text January 2019
Ab initio theory of polarons: formalism and applications text January 2019
Revealing exciton masses and dielectric properties of monolayer semiconductors with high magnetic fields text January 2019

Figures / Tables (4)