Unraveling Strain Gradient Induced Electromechanical Coupling in Twisted Double Bilayer Graphene Moiré Superlattices

Li, Yuhao; Wang, Xiao; Tang, Deqi; Wang, Xi; Watanabe, Kenji; Taniguchi, Takashi; Gamelin, Daniel R.; Cobden, David H.; Yankowitz, Matthew; Xu, Xiaodong; Li, Jiangyu

doi:10.1002/adma.202105879

Unraveling Strain Gradient Induced Electromechanical Coupling in Twisted Double Bilayer Graphene Moiré Superlattices

Journal Article · Sun Oct 10 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Advanced Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202105879· OSTI ID:1976197

Li, Yuhao ^[1]; Wang, Xiao ^[2]; Tang, Deqi ^[3]; Wang, Xi ^[4]; Watanabe, Kenji ^[5]; Taniguchi, Takashi ^[5]; Gamelin, Daniel R. ^[4]; Cobden, David H. ^[4]; Yankowitz, Matthew ^[4]; Xu, Xiaodong ^[4]; ^[6]

University of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States); Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen (China); OSTI
University of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States); Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen (China); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen (China)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen (China)
University of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba (Japan)
Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen (China); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen (China)

Moiré superlattices of 2D materials with a small twist angle are thought to exhibit appreciable flexoelectric effect, though unambiguous confirmation of their flexoelectricity is challenging due to artifacts associated with commonly used piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). For example, unexpectedly small phase contrast (≈8°) between opposite flexoelectric polarizations is reported in twisted bilayer graphene (tBG), though theoretically predicted value is 180°. We report a methodology is developed to extract intrinsic moiré flexoelectricity using twisted double bilayer graphene (tDBG) as a model system, probed by lateral PFM. For small twist angle samples, it is found that a vectorial decomposition is essential to recover the small intrinsic flexoelectric response at domain walls from a large background signal. The obtained threefold symmetry of commensurate domains with significant flexoelectric response at domain walls is fully consistent with the theoretical calculations. Incommensurate domains in tDBG with relatively large twist angles can also be observed by this technique. A general strategy is provided here for unraveling intrinsic flexoelectricity in van der Waals moiré superlattices while providing insights into engineered symmetry breaking in centrosymmetric materials.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Columbia University, New York, NY (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: Boeing Distinguished Professorship; Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST); Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory Program; Leading Talents Program of Guangdong Province; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT); National Key Research and Development Program of China; National Science Foundation (NSF); Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee; State of Washington; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0019443

OSTI ID:: 1976197

Journal Information:: Advanced Materials, Journal Name: Advanced Materials Journal Issue: 51 Vol. 33; ISSN 0935-9648

Publisher:: WileyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

References (47)

Nanoscale Flexoelectricity Nguyen, Thanh D.; Mao, Sheng; Yeh, Yao-Wen Advanced Materials, Vol. 25, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201203852	journal	January 2013
Flexoelectric effects: Charge separation in insulating solids subjected to elastic strain gradients Cross, L. Eric Journal of Materials Science, Vol. 41, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-005-5916-6	journal	January 2006
Piezoresponse force microscopy and recent advances in nanoscale studies of ferroelectrics Gruverman, A.; Kalinin, S. V. Journal of Materials Science, Vol. 41, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-005-5946-0	journal	January 2006
Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set Kresse, G.; Furthmüller, J. Computational Materials Science, Vol. 6, Issue 1, p. 15-50 https://doi.org/10.1016/0927-0256(96)00008-0	journal	July 1996
Non-piezoelectric effects in piezoresponse force microscopy Seol, Daehee; Kim, Bora; Kim, Yunseok Current Applied Physics, Vol. 17, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cap.2016.12.012	journal	May 2017
Strain-based scanning probe microscopies for functional materials, biological structures, and electrochemical systems Li, Jiangyu; Li, Jing-Feng; Yu, Qi Journal of Materiomics, Vol. 1, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmat.2015.03.001	journal	March 2015
A theory of flexoelectricity with surface effect for elastic dielectrics Shen, Shengping; Hu, Shuling Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol. 58, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmps.2010.03.001	journal	May 2010
Piezoelectricity of atomically thin WSe2 via laterally excited scanning probe microscopy Nasr Esfahani, Ehsan; Li, Terrance; Huang, Bevin Nano Energy, Vol. 52 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.07.050	journal	October 2018
Flexoelectricity in solids: Progress, challenges, and perspectives Wang, Bo; Gu, Yijia; Zhang, Shujun Progress in Materials Science, Vol. 106 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmatsci.2019.05.003	journal	December 2019
Dependence of band structures on stacking and field in layered graphene Aoki, Masato; Amawashi, Hiroshi Solid State Communications, Vol. 142, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssc.2007.02.013	journal	April 2007
Networks of ABA and ABC stacked graphene on mica observed by scanning tunneling microscopy Hattendorf, S.; Georgi, A.; Liebmann, M. Surface Science, Vol. 610 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susc.2013.01.005	journal	April 2013
van der Waals Heterostructures with High Accuracy Rotational Alignment Kim, Kyounghwan; Yankowitz, Matthew; Fallahazad, Babak Nano Letters, Vol. 16, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b05263	journal	February 2016
Unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene superlattices Cao, Yuan; Fatemi, Valla; Fang, Shiang Nature, Vol. 556, Issue 7699 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature26160	journal	March 2018
Strong piezoelectricity in single-layer graphene deposited on SiO2 grating substrates da Cunha Rodrigues, Gonçalo; Zelenovskiy, Pavel; Romanyuk, Konstantin Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8572	journal	June 2015
Linking a completely three-dimensional nanostrain to a structural transformation eigenstrain Tirry, Wim; Schryvers, Dominique Nature Materials, Vol. 8, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2488	journal	June 2009
A ferroelectric-like structural transition in a metal Shi, Youguo; Guo, Yanfeng; Wang, Xia Nature Materials, Vol. 12, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3754	journal	September 2013
Commensurate–incommensurate transition in graphene on hexagonal boron nitride Woods, C. R.; Britnell, L.; Eckmann, A. Nature Physics, Vol. 10, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2954	journal	April 2014
Charge-polarized interfacial superlattices in marginally twisted hexagonal boron nitride Woods, C. R.; Ares, P.; Nevison-Andrews, H. Nature Communications, Vol. 12, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20667-2	journal	January 2021
Atomic and electronic reconstruction at the van der Waals interface in twisted bilayer graphene Yoo, Hyobin; Engelke, Rebecca; Carr, Stephen Nature Materials, Vol. 18, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0346-z	journal	April 2019
Visualization of moiré superlattices McGilly, Leo J.; Kerelsky, Alexander; Finney, Nathan R. Nature Nanotechnology, Vol. 15, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0708-3	journal	June 2020
Correlated states in twisted double bilayer graphene Shen, Cheng; Chu, Yanbang; Wu, QuanSheng Nature Physics, Vol. 16, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0825-9	journal	March 2020
Superconductivity and strong correlations in moiré flat bands Balents, Leon; Dean, Cory R.; Efetov, Dmitri K. Nature Physics, Vol. 16, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0906-9	journal	May 2020
Symmetry breaking in twisted double bilayer graphene He, Minhao; Li, Yuhao; Cai, Jiaqi Nature Physics, Vol. 17, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-1030-6	journal	September 2020
Tunable spin-polarized correlated states in twisted double bilayer graphene Liu, Xiaomeng; Hao, Zeyu; Khalaf, Eslam Nature, Vol. 583, Issue 7815 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2458-7	journal	July 2020
Isospin Pomeranchuk effect in twisted bilayer graphene Saito, Yu; Yang, Fangyuan; Ge, Jingyuan Nature, Vol. 592, Issue 7853 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03409-2	journal	April 2021
Observation of the flexoelectric effect in relaxor Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 ceramics Ma, Wenhui; Cross, L. Eric Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 78, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1356444	journal	May 2001
Large flexoelectric polarization in ceramic lead magnesium niobate Ma, Wenhui; Cross, L. Eric Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 79, Issue 26 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1426690	journal	December 2001
Quantitative analysis of ferroelectric domain imaging with piezoresponse force microscopy Jungk, Tobias; Hoffmann, Ákos; Soergel, Elisabeth Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 89, Issue 16 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2362984	journal	October 2006
A consistent and accurate ab initio parametrization of density functional dispersion correction (DFT-D) for the 94 elements H-Pu Grimme, Stefan; Antony, Jens; Ehrlich, Stephan The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 132, Issue 15 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3382344	journal	April 2010
Delineating local electromigration for nanoscale probing of lithium ion intercalation and extraction by electrochemical strain microscopy Nataly Chen, Qian; Liu, Yanyi; Liu, Yuanming Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4742933	journal	August 2012
Relationship between direct and converse flexoelectric coefficients Shu, Longlong; Li, Fei; Huang, Wenbin Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 116, Issue 14 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4897647	journal	October 2014
Ferroelectric or non-ferroelectric: Why so many materials exhibit “ferroelectricity” on the nanoscale Vasudevan, Rama K.; Balke, Nina; Maksymovych, Peter Applied Physics Reviews, Vol. 4, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979015	journal	June 2017
Moiréless correlations in ABCA graphene Kerelsky, Alexander; Rubio-Verdú, Carmen; Xian, Lede Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 118, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2017366118	journal	January 2021
Structural and electronic transformation in low-angle twisted bilayer graphene Gargiulo, Fernando; Yazyev, Oleg V. 2D Materials, Vol. 5, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/aa9640	journal	November 2017
Projector augmented-wave method Blöchl, P. E. Physical Review B, Vol. 50, Issue 24, p. 17953-17979 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.50.17953	journal	December 1994
Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set Kresse, G.; Furthmüller, J. Physical Review B, Vol. 54, Issue 16, p. 11169-11186 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.54.11169	journal	October 1996
From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method Kresse, G.; Joubert, D. Physical Review B, Vol. 59, Issue 3, p. 1758-1775 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.59.1758	journal	January 1999
Potential energy surface for graphene on graphene: Ab initio derivation, analytical description, and microscopic interpretation Reguzzoni, M.; Fasolino, A.; Molinari, E. Physical Review B, Vol. 86, Issue 24 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.86.245434	journal	December 2012
Superlattice-Induced Insulating States and Valley-Protected Orbits in Twisted Bilayer Graphene Cao, Y.; Luo, J. Y.; Fatemi, V. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 117, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.116804	journal	September 2016
Correlated Insulating States in Twisted Double Bilayer Graphene Burg, G. William; Zhu, Jihang; Taniguchi, Takashi Physical Review Letters, Vol. 123, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.197702	journal	November 2019
Symmetry Considerations on Martensitic Transformations: "Ferroelectric" Metals? Anderson, P. W.; Blount, E. I. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 14, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.217	journal	February 1965
Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple Perdew, John P.; Burke, Kieron; Ernzerhof, Matthias Physical Review Letters, Vol. 77, Issue 18, p. 3865-3868 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.3865	journal	October 1996
Charge Carriers in Few-Layer Graphene Films Latil, Sylvain; Henrard, Luc Physical Review Letters, Vol. 97, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.036803	journal	July 2006
Emergent ferromagnetism near three-quarters filling in twisted bilayer graphene Sharpe, Aaron L.; Fox, Eli J.; Barnard, Arthur W. Science, Vol. 365, Issue 6453 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw3780	journal	July 2019
Intrinsic quantized anomalous Hall effect in a moiré heterostructure Serlin, M.; Tschirhart, C. L.; Polshyn, H. Science, Vol. 367, Issue 6480 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay5533	journal	December 2019
Stacking-engineered ferroelectricity in bilayer boron nitride Yasuda, Kenji; Wang, Xirui; Watanabe, Kenji Science, Vol. 372, Issue 6549 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd3230	journal	May 2021
Flexoelectric Effect in Solids Zubko, Pavlo; Catalan, Gustau; Tagantsev, Alexander K. Annual Review of Materials Research, Vol. 43, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-matsci-071312-121634	journal	July 2013

Similar Records

Dynamically tunable moiré exciton Rydberg states in a monolayer semiconductor on twisted bilayer graphene

Journal Article · Wed Jan 03 19:00:00 EST 2024 · Nature Materials · OSTI ID:2378083

Hyperbolic enhancement of photocurrent patterns in minimally twisted bilayer graphene

Journal Article · Thu Mar 11 19:00:00 EST 2021 · Nature Communications · OSTI ID:1816196

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
flexoelectricity
lateral piezoelectric force microscope
moiré superlattice
twisted double bilayer graphene

Unraveling Strain Gradient Induced Electromechanical Coupling in Twisted Double Bilayer Graphene Moiré Superlattices

Citation Formats

References (47)

Similar Records

Related Subjects