Moir\'{e} metrology of energy landscapes in van der Waals heterostructures
COFFEE_KLATCH · Invited
Abstract
The emerging field of twistronics, which harnesses the twist angle between two-dimensional materials, has revolutionized quantum materials research. The twist angle induced superlattice offers means to control topology and strong correlations -- topics of great interest in contemporary quantum physics. At the small twist limit, and particularly under strain, as atomic relaxation prevails, the emergent moir\'{e} superlattice encodes elusive insights into the local interlayer interaction. In this work we introduce moir\'{e} 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 moir\'{e} 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 moir\'{e} metrology for three representative twisted systems: bilayer graphene, double bilayer graphene and H-stacked MoSe$_{\mathrm{2}}$/WSe$_{\mathrm{2}}$. Moir\'{e} metrology establishes sought after experimental benchmarks for interlayer interaction, thus enabling accurate modelling of twisted multilayers.
*Research on of moiré metrology is supported as part of Programmable Quantum Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award DE-SC0019443. DH was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (579913)
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