We consider a system of spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice with substrate-induced modulated electrostatic potentials tripling the unit cell. The resulting non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields act cooperatively to realize a quadratic band crossing point (QBCP). Using a combination of mean-field theory and renormalization group techniques, we show that in the QBCP regime, arbitrarily weak repulsive electronic interactions drive the system into the quantum anomalous Hall state. This proves that substrate-induced local voltages are an effective knob to induce the spontaneous formation of a topological quantum phase.
Flat bands in lattice models have provided useful platforms for studying strong correlation and topological physics. Recently, honeycomb superlattices have been shown to host flat bands that persist in the presence of local perturbations respecting lattice symmetries. We analytically derive the flat band energies in the presence of longer range hopping and find that the energies of flat bands are tunable by these perturbations. In real space, the wave function is constructed from standing waves on each honeycomb edge, allowing the construction of plaquette and loop eigenstates due to destructi…
Pump-probe experiments and polarizing microscopy are applied to examine temperature and heat flow in metallic magnetic superlattices on glass substrates. A model of heat diffusion in thin layers for cylindrical symmetry, equivalent to the Green's function method, gives a good description of the results. The frequency dependence of temperature modulation shows that a glass layer should be added to the sample structure. The demagnetization patterns are reproduced with a Green's function that includes an interface conductance.
Strong band engineering in two-dimensional (2D) materials can be achieved by introducing moiré superlattices, leading to the emergence of various novel quantum phases with promising potential for future applications. Presented works to create moiré patterns have been focused on a twist embedded inside channel materials or between channel and substrate. However, the effects of a twist inside the substrate materials on the unaligned channel materials are much less explored. In this work, we report the realization of superlattice multi-Dirac cones with the coexistence of the main Dirac cone in a …
A graphene-based superlattice formed due to the periodic modulation of the band gap has been investigated. Such a modulation is possible in graphene deposited on a strip substrate made of silicon oxide and hexagonal boron nitride. The advantages and some possible problems in the superlattice under consideration are discussed. A model describing such a superlattice is proposed and the dispersion relation between the energy and momentum of carriers has been obtained using the transfer matrix method within this model.
Lateral superlattices in 2D materials are emerging as a powerful platform for exploring novel quantum phenomena, which can be realized through the proximity coupling in forming moiré pattern with another layer. This approach, however, is invasive, material-specific, and requires small lattice mismatch and suitable band alignment, largely limited to graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) of anti-parallel (AA') stacking order has been an indispensable building block, as dielectric substrates and capping layers for realizing high quality van der Waals…
We study a novel type of graphene-based superlattices formed owing to a periodic modulation of the Fermi surface. Such a modulation is possible for graphene deposited on a striped substrate made of materials with substantially different values of the dc permittivity. Similar superlattices appear also in graphene sheets applied over substrates with a periodic array of parallel grooves. We suggest a model describing such superlattices. Using the transfer-matrix technique, we determine the dispersion relation and calculate the energy spectrum of these superlattices. We also analyze at a qualitati…
The two inequivalent valleys in graphene preclude the protection against inter-valley scattering offered by an odd-number of Dirac cones characteristic of Z2 topological insulator phases. Here we propose a way to engineer a chiral single-valley metallic phase with quadratic crossover in a honeycomb lattice through tailored \sqrt{3}N *\sqrt{3}N or 3N *3N superlattices. The possibility of tuning valley-polarization via pseudo-Zeeman field and the emergence of Dresselhaus-type valley-orbit coupling are proposed in adatom decorated graphene superlattices. Such valley manipulation mechanisms and me…
Artificial lattices have served as a platform to study the physics of unconventional superconductivity. We study semiconductor artificial graphene -- a honeycomb superlattice imposed on a semiconductor heterostructure -- which hosts the Dirac physics of graphene but with a tunable periodic potential strength and lattice spacing, allowing control of the strength of the electron-electron interactions. We demonstrate a new mechanism for superconductivity due to repulsive interactions which requires a strong lattice potential and a minimum doping away from the Dirac points. The mechanism relies on…
Ordered atomic-scale superlattices on surface hold great interest both for basic science and for potential applications in advanced technology. However, controlled fabrication of superlattices down to atomic scale has proven exceptionally challenging. Here we demonstrate the segregation-growth and self-organization of ordered S atomic superlattices confined at the interface between graphene and S-rich Cu substrates. Scanning tunneling microscope (STM) studies show that, by finely controlling the growth temperature, we obtain well-ordered S (sub)nanometer-cluster superlattice and monoatomic sup…
We report a successful preparation of a purely honeycomb, graphene-like borophene, by using an Al(111) surface as the substrate and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth in ultrahigh vacuum. Our scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) reveals perfect monolayer borophene with planar, non-buckled honeycomb lattice similar as graphene. Theoretical calculations show that the honeycomb borophene on Al(111) is energetically stable. Remarkably, nearly one electron charge is transferred to each boron atom from the Al(111) substrate and stabilizes the honeycomb borophene structure, in contrast to the little …
We investigate the organized formation of strain, ripples and suspended features in macroscopic CVD-prepared graphene sheets transferred onto a corrugated substrate made of an ordered arrays of silica pillars of variable geometries. Depending on the aspect ratio and sharpness of the corrugated array, graphene can conformally coat the surface, partially collapse, or lay, fakir-like, fully suspended between pillars over tens of micrometers. Upon increase of pillar density, ripples in collapsed films display a transition from random oriented pleats emerging from pillars to ripples linking nearest…
Topological spin textures, like skyrmions, have significant potential for spintronics applications. The main purpose of this work is to study further the topological spin textures on the discrete lattice with magnetic fields. In this work, we study a classical rotated Heisenberg model with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, bond-dependent anisotropy and easy-axis anisotropy on the honeycomb lattice via Monte Carlo simulations. We mainly focus on phase diagrams with magnetic fields, especially on the non-trivial phases only existing with fields. The results demonstrate the emergence of field-in…
We provide a comprehensive microscopic understanding of the nucleation of topological quantum liquids, a general mechanism where interactions between non-Abelian anyons cause a transition to another topological phase, which we study in the context of Kitaev's honeycomb lattice model. For non-Abelian vortex excitations arranged on superlattices, we observe the nucleation of several distinct Abelian topological phases whose character is found to depend on microscopic parameters such as the superlattice spacing or the spin exchange couplings. By reformulating the interacting vortex superlattice i…
A model for energy spectrum of superlattice on the base of graphene placed on the striped dielectric substrate is proposed. A direct current component which appears in that structure perpendicularly to pulling electric field under the influence of elliptically polarized electromagnetic wave was derived. A transverse current density dependence on pulling field magnitude and on magnitude of component of elliptically polarized wave directed along the axis of a superlattice is analyzed.
Lateral superlattices have attracted major interest as this may allow one to modify spectra of two dimensional electron systems and, ultimately, create materials with tailored electronic properties. Previously, it proved difficult to realize superlattices with sufficiently short periodicity and weak disorder, and most of the observed features could be explained in terms of commensurate cyclotron orbits. Evidence for the formation of superlattice minibands (so called Hofstadter's butterfly) has been limited to the observation of new low-field oscillations and an internal structure within Landau…
Magneto-optical transitions between Landau levels can provide precise spectroscopic information on the electronic structure and excitation spectra of graphene, enabling probes of substrate and many-body effects. We calculate the magneto-optical conductivity of large-size graphene flakes using a tight-binding approach. Our method allows us to directly compare the magneto-optical response of an isolated graphene flake with one aligned on hexagonal boron nitride giving rise to a periodic superlattice potential. The substrate interaction induces band gaps away from the Dirac point. In the presence…
Recent experimental studies on graphene on hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) have demonstrated that hBN is not only a passive substrate that ensures superb electronic properties of graphene's carriers, but that it actively modifies their massless Dirac fermion character through a periodic moiré potential. In this work we present a theory of the plasmon excitation spectrum of massless Dirac fermions in a moiré superlattice. We demonstrate that graphene-hBN stacks offer a rich platform for plasmonics in which control of plasmon modes can occur not only via electrostatic gating but also by adjusting …
Interactions between stacked two-dimensional (2D) atomic crystals can radically change their properties, leading to essentially new materials in terms of the electronic structure. Here we show that monolayers placed on an atomically flat substrate can be forced to undergo a buckling transition, which results in periodically strained superlattices. By using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy and support from numerical simulations, we show that such lateral superlattices in graphene lead to a periodically modulated pseudo-magnetic field, which in turn creates a post-graphene material…
The structure and interface characteristics of (LaVO3)6m(SrVO3)m superlattices deposited on (100)-SrTiO3 (STO) substrate were studied using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Cross-section TEM studies revealed that both LaVO3 (LVO) and SrVO3 (SVO) layers are good single crystal quality and epitaxially grown with respect to the substrate. It is evidenced that LVO layers are made of two orientational variants of a distorted perovskite compatible with bulk LaVO3 while SVO layers suffers from a tetragonal distortion due to the substrate induced stain. Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) …
We find a systematic reappearance of massive Dirac features at the edges of consecutive minibands formed at magnetic fields B_{p/q}= pϕ_0/(qS) providing rational magnetic flux through a unit cell of the moire superlattice created by a hexagonal substrate for electrons in graphene. The Dirac-type features in the minibands at B=B_{p/q} determine a hierarchy of gaps in the surrounding fractal spectrum, and show that these minibands have topological insulator properties. Using the additional $q$-fold degeneracy of magnetic minibands at B_{p/q}, we trace the hierarchy of the gaps to their manifesta…
We study nxn honeycomb superlattices of defects in graphene. The considered defects are missing p_z orbitals and can be realized by either introducing C atom vacancies or chemically binding simple atomic species at the given sites. Using symmetry arguments we show how it is possible to open a gap when n=3m+1,3m+2 (m integer), and estimate its value to have an approximate square-root dependence on the defect concentration x=1/n^2. Tight-binding calculations confirm these findings and show that the induced-gaps can be quite large, e.g. ~100 meV for x~10^{-3}. Gradient-corrected density functiona…
Transverse thermoelectric effects in response to an out-of-plane heat current have been studied in an external magnetic field for ferromagnetic superlattices consisting of La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 and SrRuO3 layers. The superlattices were fabricated on SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed laser deposition. We found that the sign of the transverse thermoelectric voltage for the superlattices is opposite to that for La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 and SrRuO3 single layers at 200 K, implying an important role of spin Seebeck effects inside the superlattices. At 10 K, the magnetothermoelectric curves shift from the zero field du…
We have studied acoustic topological edge modes in a honeycomb phononic crystal composed of metallic nano-pillars on a LiNbO$_3$ substrate. Acoustic band calculations show that the topological surface acoustic wave (SAW) mode inhabits the edge of the honeycomb phononic crystal in spite of the hybridization with the internal acoustic modes of the substrate. Pulse-type microwave impedance microscopy realized clear visualization of the gigahertz topological edge mode between two mutually inverted topological phononic crystals. A frequency-dependent image showed that the edge mode evolves as the b…
We present optimization of [(15 $\unicode{x212B}$) Ni$_{80}$Fe$_{20}$/(5 $\unicode{xC5}$) M]$_{20}$ single crystal multilayers on (001) MgO, with M being Cu, Cu$_{50}$Pt$_{50}$ and Pt. These superlattices were characterized by high-resolution X-ray reflectivity (XRR) and diffraction (XRD) as well as polar mapping of important crystal planes. It is shown that cube on cube epitaxial relationship can be obtained when depositing at the substrate temperature of 100 $^\circ$C regardless of the lattice mismatch (5% and 14% for Cu and Pt, respectively). At lower substrate temperatures poly-crystalline…
Stack of correlated insulating states in bilayer graphene kagome superlattice
State Key Laboratory of Quantum Functional Materials, School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学物理科学与技术学院量子功能材料国家重点实验室）；ShanghaiTech Laboratory for Topological Physics, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学拓扑物理实验室）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside（加州大学河滨分校物理与天文学系）；Department of Physics, University of Oxford（牛津大学物理系）；School of Information Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学信息科学与技术学院）
Two-dimensional atomic crystals can radically change their properties in response to external influences such as substrate orientation or strain, resulting in essentially new materials in terms of the electronic structure. A striking example is the creation of flat-bands in bilayer-graphene for certain 'magic' twist-angles between the orientations of the two layers. The quenched kinetic-energy in these flat-bands promotes electron-electron interactions and facilitates the emergence of strongly-correlated phases such as superconductivity and correlated-insulators. However, the exquisite fine-tu…
Twisted moiré superlattices (TMSs) are fascinating materials with exotic physical properties. Despite tremendous studies on electronic, photonic and phononic TMSs, it has never been witnessed that TMSs can exhibit higher-order band topology. Here, we report on the experimental observation of higher-order topological states in acoustic TMSs. By introducing moiré twisting in bilayer honeycomb lattices of coupled acoustic resonators, we find a regime with designed interlayer couplings where a sizable band gap with higher-order topology emerges. This higher-order topological phase host unique topo…
The possibility of dissipationless chiral edge states without the need of an external magnetic field in the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) offers a great potential in electronic/spintronic applications. The biggest hurdle for the realization of a room-temperature magnetic Chern insulator is to find a structurally stable material with a sufficiently large energy gap and Curie temperature that can be easily implemented in electronic devices. This work based on first-principle methods shows that a single atomic layer of V2O3 with honeycomb-kagome (HK) lattice is structurally stable with a s…
We study the electronic and transport properties of a graphene-based superlattice theoretically by using an effective Dirac equation. The superlattice consists of a periodic potential applied on a single-layer graphene deposited on a substrate that opens an energy gap of $2Δ$ in its electronic structure. We find that extra Dirac points appear in the electronic band structure under certain conditions, so it is possible to close the gap between the conduction and valence minibands. We show that the energy gap $E_g$ can be tuned in the range $0\leq E_g \leq 2Δ$ by changing the periodic potential.…
Bandgap engineering and quantum confinement in semiconductor heterostructures provide the means to fine-tune material response to electromagnetic fields and light in a wide range of the spectrum. Nonetheless, forming semiconductor heterostructures on lattice-mismatched substrates has been a challenge for several decades, leading to restrictions for device integration and the lack of efficient devices in important wavelength bands. Here, we show that the van der Waals epitaxy of two-dimensional (2D) GaSe and InSe heterostructures occur on substrates with substantially different lattice paramete…
Silicene and germanene derivatives constructed from periodic dumbbell units play a crucial role in multilayers of these honeycomb structures. Using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory, here we investigate the dumbbell formation mechanisms and energetics of Group IV atoms adsorbed on graphene, silicene, germanene and stanene monolayer honeycomb structures. The stabilities of the binding structures are further confirmed by performing ab-initio molecular dynamics calculations at elevated temperatures, except for stanene which is subject to structural instability upon …
The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) materials launched a fascinating frontier of flatland electronics. Most crystalline atomic layer materials are based on layered van der Waals materials with weak interlayer bonding, which naturally leads to thermodynamically stable monolayers. We report the synthesis of a 2D insulator comprised of a single atomic sheet of honeycomb structure BeO (h-BeO), although its bulk counterpart has a wurtzite structure. The h-BeO is grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on Ag(111) thin films that are conveniently grown on Si(111) wafers. Using scanning tunneling micr…
In two-dimensional (2D) twisted bilayers, the van der Waals (vdW) interlayer interaction introduces atomic-scale reconstruction at interface by locally rotating lattice to form strain-field vortex networks in their moiré superlattice. However, direct imaging the tiny local lattice rotation of the strain-field vortex requires extremely high spatial resolution and is an outstanding challenge in experiment. Here, a topmost small-period graphene moiré pattern is introduced to magnify sub-Angstrom distortions of the lattice and tiny local lattice rotation in underlying twisted bilayer graphene (TBG…
We compare the electron dynamics at monocrystalline Cu(111), Au(100) and Pd(111) precursor substrates with vicinal nanosteps. The unoccupied bands of a surface superlattice are populated \textit{via} the resonant charge transfer (RCT) between the surface and a H$^-$ ion that flies by at grazing angles. A quantum mechanical wave packet propagation approach is utilized to simulate the motion of the active electron where time-evolved wave packet densities are used to visualize the dynamics through the superlattice. The survived ion fraction in the reflected beam generally exhibits modulations as …
Resonant interlayer coupling in NbSe$_2$-graphite epitaxial moir{é} superlattices
SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews（圣安德鲁斯大学物理与天文学学院）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学物理与天文学系）；Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids（马克斯·普朗克固体化学物理研究所）；Physics Study Program, Faculty of Science and Technology, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta（雅加达希达亚图拉伊斯兰国立大学科技理学院物理学专业）；Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University（东北大学材料科学研究所）
