Title: Moiré metrology of energy landscapes in van der Waals heterostructures

Abstract

The emerging field of twistronics, which harnesses the twist angle between two-dimensional materials, represents a promising route for the design of quantum materials, as the twist-angle-induced superlattices offer means to control topology and strong correlations. At the small twist limit, and particularly under strain, as atomic relaxation prevails, the emergent moiré superlattice encodes elusive insights into the local interlayer interaction. Here we introduce moiré metrology as a combined experiment-theory framework to probe the stacking energy landscape of bilayer structures at the 0.1 meV/atom scale, outperforming the gold-standard of quantum chemistry. Through studying the shapes of moiré domains with numerous nano-imaging techniques, and correlating with multi-scale modelling, we assess and refine first-principle models for the interlayer interaction. We document the prowess of moiré metrology for three representative twisted systems: bilayer graphene, double bilayer graphene and H-stacked MoSe₂/WSe₂. Moiré metrology establishes sought after experimental benchmarks for interlayer interaction, thus enabling accurate modelling of twisted multilayers.

Authors:

Halbertal, Dorri  ^[1];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-1665-0724"

Finney, Nathan R.  ^[2];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-6909-0276"

Sunku, Sai S. ^[3]; Kerelsky, Alexander ^[3]; Rubio-Verdú, Carmen ^[3]; Shabani, Sara ^[3]; Xian, Lede  ^[4];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-9595-2404"

Carr, Stephen ^[5]; Chen, Shaowen  ^[3];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-7254-1023"

Zhang, Charles ^[3]; Wang, Lei  ^[3];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-1919-9107"

Gonzalez-Acevedo, Derick ^[3]; McLeod, Alexander S.  ^[3];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-5232-634X"

Rhodes, Daniel ^[3]; Watanabe, Kenji  ^[6];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0003-3701-8119"

Taniguchi, Takashi ^[6]; Kaxiras, Efthimios  ^[7];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-4682-0165"

Dean, Cory R.  ^[3];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0003-2967-5960"

Hone, James C.  ^[2];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-8084-3301"

Pasupathy, Abhay N.  ^[3]

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-2744-0634"

more »; Kennes, Dante M.  ^[8];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-9838-6866"

Rubio, Angel  ^[9];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0003-2060-3151"

Basov, D. N.  ^[3]

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-9785-5387"

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Dept. of Physics
2. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
3. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Dept. of Physics
4. Max Planck Inst. for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg (Germany). Center Free-Electron Laser Science
5. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
6. National Inst. for Material Science, Tsukuba (Japan)
7. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States). John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
8. Max Planck Inst. for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg (Germany). Center Free-Electron Laser Science; RWTH Aachen Univ. (Germany). Institut fur Theorie der Statistischen Physik
9. Max Planck Inst. for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg (Germany). Center Free-Electron Laser Science; Flatiron Institute, New York, NY (United States). Center for Computational Quantum Physics

Publication Date:

Mon Jan 11 00:00:00 EST 2021

Research Org.:

Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Krell Institute, Ames, IA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

OSTI Identifier:

1816209

Grant/Contract Number:  

NA0003864; SC0019443

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Nature Communications

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 12; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:

Nature Publishing Group

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS