Tunable correlated Chern insulator and ferromagnetism in a moiré superlattice

Chen, Guorui; Sharpe, Aaron L.; Fox, Eli J.; Zhang, Ya-Hui; Wang, Shaoxin; Jiang, Lili; Lyu, Bosai; Li, Hongyuan; Watanabe, Kenji; Taniguchi, Takashi; Shi, Zhiwen; Senthil, T.; Goldhaber-Gordon, David; Zhang, Yuanbo; Wang, Feng

doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2049-7

Title: Tunable correlated Chern insulator and ferromagnetism in a moiré superlattice

Journal Article · Wed Mar 04 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Nature (London)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2049-7· OSTI ID:1647087

Chen, Guorui ^[1]; Sharpe, Aaron L. ^[2]; Fox, Eli J. ^[3]; Zhang, Ya-Hui ^[4]; Wang, Shaoxin ^[5]; Jiang, Lili ^[5]; Lyu, Bosai ^[6]; Li, Hongyuan ^[1]; Watanabe, Kenji ^[7]; Taniguchi, Takashi ^[7]; Shi, Zhiwen ^[6]; Senthil, T. ^[4]; Goldhaber-Gordon, David ^[3]; Zhang, Yuanbo ^[8]; Wang, Feng ^[9]

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Stanford Univ., CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. (China); Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing (China)
National Inst. for Materials Science, Tsukuba (Japan)
Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing (China); Fudan Univ., Shanghai (China)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute, Berkeley, CA (United States)

Studies of two-dimensional electron systems in a strong magnetic field revealed the quantum Hall effect1, a topological state of matter featuring a finite Chern number C and chiral edge states2,3. Haldane4 later theorized that Chern insulators with integer quantum Hall effects could appear in lattice models with complex hopping parameters even at zero magnetic field. The ABC-trilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (ABC-TLG/hBN) moiré superlattice provides an attractive platform with which to explore Chern insulators because it features nearly flat moiré minibands with a valley-dependent, electrically tunable Chern number5,6. Here we report the experimental observation of a correlated Chern insulator in an ABC-TLG/hBN moiré superlattice. We show that reversing the direction of the applied vertical electric field switches the moiré minibands of ABC-TLG/hBN between zero and finite Chern numbers, as revealed by large changes in magneto-transport behaviour. For topological hole minibands tuned to have a finite Chern number, we focus on quarter filling, corresponding to one hole per moiré unit cell. The Hall resistance is well quantized at h/2e2 (where h is Planck's constant and e is the charge on the electron), which implies C = 2, for a magnetic field exceeding 0.4 tesla. The correlated Chern insulator is ferromagnetic, exhibiting substantial magnetic hysteresis and a large anomalous Hall signal at zero magnetic field. Our discovery of a C = 2 Chern insulator at zero magnetic field should open up opportunities for discovering correlated topological states, possibly with topological excitations7, in nearly flat and topologically nontrivial moiré minibands.

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Research Organization:: Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Center for Novel Pathways to Quantum Coherence in Materials (NPQC); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; National Science Foundation (NSF); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; National Key Research Program of China; National Science Foundation of China; Chinese Academy of Sciences; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515; GBMF3429; 2016YFA0300703; 2018YFA0305600; U1732274; 11527805; 11425415; 11421404; XDB30000000; 2016YFA0302001; 11574204; 11774224; DMR-1608505; AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1647087

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1676375

Journal Information:: Nature (London), Vol. 579, Issue 7797; ISSN 0028-0836

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 349 works

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Correlated states in twisted double bilayer graphene Shen, Cheng; Chu, Yanbang; Wu, QuanSheng arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1903.06952	text	January 2019

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