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Title: Moiré-Assisted Strain Transfer in Vertical van der Waals Heterostructures

Journal Article · · Nano Letters

Strain provides a powerful method to study 2D monolayers and to tune their properties. The same approach also has great potential for van-der-Waals (vdW) heterostructures. However, we need to understand how strain can be applied to vertically stacked vdW structures, for which strain transfer from one layer to the next remains little explored. In our experiment, we fabricated vertical heterostructures consisting of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) monolayers that were deposited on a flexible substrate. These TMDC heterostructures allowed us to read out separately the strain in each monolayer by photoluminescence measurements. We find that, in TMDC heterostructures with large twist angles (>5°), strain transfer is limited. However, for aligned heterostructures with small twist angles (≤5°), near unity strain transfer efficiency is observed. Here, we correlate this finding with the moiré domains formed in the aligned heterostructures by reconstruction.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division (MSE)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
2283816
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 23, Issue 21; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Figures / Tables (5)