Stacking order has strong influence on the coupling between the two layers of twisted bilayer graphene (BLG), which in turn determines its physical properties. Here, we report the investigation of the interlayer coupling of the epitaxially grown single-crystal 30° twisted BLG on Cu(111) at the atomic scale. The stacking order and morphology of BLG is controlled by a rationally designed two-step growth process, that is, the thermodynamically controlled nucleation and kinetically controlled growth. The crystal structure of the 30°-twisted bilayer graphene (30°-tBLG) is determined to have the quasicrystal like symmetry. The electronic properties and interlayer coupling of the 30°-tBLG is investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS). The energy-dependent local density of states (DOS) with in-situ electrostatic doping shows that the electronic states in two graphene layers are decoupled near the Dirac point. A linear dispersion originated from the constituent graphene monolayers is discovered with doubled degeneracy. This study contributes to controlled growth of twist-angle-defined BLG, and provides insights of the electronic properties and interlayer coupling in this intriguing system.
We study the electronic structure of quasicrystals composed of incommensurate stacks of atomic layers. We consider two systems: a pair of square lattices with a relative twist angle of $θ=45^\circ$ and a pair of hexagonal lattices with a relative twist angle of $θ=30^\circ$, with various interlayer interaction strengths. This constitutes every two-dimensional bilayer quasicrystal system. We investigate the resonant coupling governing the quasicrystalline order in each quasicrystal symmetry, and calculate the quasi-band dispersion. The resonant interaction emerges in bilayer quasicrystals if al…
The incommensurate 30$^{\circ}$ twisted bilayer graphene (BG) possesses both relativistic Dirac fermions and quasiperiodicity with 12-fold rotational symmetry arising from the interlayer interaction [\href{https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6404/782}{Ahn et al., Science \textbf{361}, 782 (2018)} and \href{https://www.pnas.org/content/115/27/6928}{Yao et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. \textbf{115}, 6928 (2018)}]. Understanding how the interlayer states interact with each other is of vital importance for identifying and subsequently engineering the quasicrystalline order in the layered stru…
We have explored the electronic properties of stacked graphene flakes with the help of the quantum chemistry methods. We found that the behavior of a bilayer system is governed by the strength of the repulsive interactions that arise between the layers as a result of the orthogonality of their $π$ orbitals. The decoupling effect, seen experimentally in AA stacked layers is a result of the repulsion being dominant over the orbital interactions and the observed layer misorientation of 2$^{\circ}-5^{\circ}$ is an attempt by the system to suppress that repulsion and stabilize itself. For misorient…
Layers of twisted bilayer graphene exhibit varieties of exotic quantum phenomena1-5. Today, the twist angle Θ has become an important degree of freedom for exploring novel states of matters, i.e. two-dimensional superconductivity ( Θ = 1.1°)6, 7 and a two-dimensional quasicrystal (Θ = 30°)8, 9. We report herein experimental observation on the photo-induced ultrafast dynamics of Dirac fermions in the quasicrystalline 30° twisted bilayer graphene (QCTBG). We discover that hot carriers are asymmetrically distributed between the two graphene layers, followed by the opposing femtosecond relaxations…
Photo- and thermally-induced huge layer decoupling in twisted bilayer WSe$_2$
RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science(RIKEN 新兴物质科学中心);Quantum-Phase Electronics Center and Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo(东京大学量子相电子中心及应用物理系);Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo(东京大学工业科学研究所);Research Center for Electronic and Optical Materials, National Institute for Materials Science(国立材料研究所电子与光学材料研究中心);Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science(国立材料研究所材料纳米架构研究中心)
Electronic Reconstruction at the Quasicrystal-Moiré Crossover in Twisted Bilayer Graphene
National Cheng Kung University(国立成功大学);Center for Quantum Frontiers of Research & Technology (QFort), National Cheng Kung University(国立成功大学量子前沿研究与技术中心);National Taiwan University(国立台湾大学);Center for Condensed Matter Sciences, National Taiwan University(国立台湾大学凝聚态科学中心);Center of Atomic Initiative for New Materials, National Taiwan University(国立台湾大学原子级新材料创新中心)
Quantum states of quasiparticles in solids are dictated by symmetry. Thus, a discovery of unconventional symmetry can provide a new opportunity to reach a novel quantum state. Recently, Dirac and Weyl electrons have been observed in crystals with discrete translational symmetry. Here we experimentally demonstrate Dirac electrons in a two-dimensional quasicrystal without translational symmetry. A dodecagonal quasicrystal was realized by epitaxial growth of twisted bilayer graphene rotated exactly 30 degree. The graphene quasicrystal was grown up to a millimeter scale on SiC(0001) surface while …
When two identical two-dimensional (2D) periodic lattices are stacked in parallel after rotating one layer by a certain angle relative to the other layer, the resulting bilayer system can lose lattice periodicity completely and become a 2D quasicrystal. Twisted bilayer graphene with 30-degree rotation is a representative example. We show that such quasicrystalline bilayer systems generally develop macroscopically degenerate localized zero-energy states (ZESs) in strong coupling limit where the interlayer couplings are overwhelmingly larger than the intralayer couplings. The emergent chiral sym…
With the help of the quantum chemistry methods we have investigated the nature of interlayer interactions between graphene fragments in different stacking arrangements (AA and AB). We found that the AB stacking pattern as the ground state of the system, is characterized by the effective inter-band orbital interactions which are barely present in the AA. Their vanishing induces electronic decoupling between the graphene layers, so that the bonding interaction $ΔE_{oi}$ between the flakes is drastically reduced from -0.482 eV to -0.087 eV as the stacking pattern is changed from AB to AA. The eff…
Twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) forms a quasicrystal whose structural and electronic properties depend on the angle of rotation between its layers. Here we present a scanning tunneling microscopy study of gate-tunable tBLG devices supported by atomically-smooth and chemically inert hexagonal boron nitride (BN). The high quality of these tBLG devices allows identification of coexisting moiré patterns and moiré super-superlattices produced by graphene-graphene and graphene-BN interlayer interactions. Furthermore, we examine additional tBLG spectroscopic features in the local density of states be…
In this paper, the electronic properties of 30° twisted double bilayer graphene, which loses the translational symmetry due to the incommensurate twist angle, are studied by means of the tight-binding approximation. We demonstrate the interlayer decoupling in the low-energy region from various electronic properties, such as the density of states, effective band structure, optical conductivity and Landau level spectrum. However, at Q points, the interlayer coupling results in the appearance of new Van Hove singularities in the density of states, new peaks in the optical conductivity and importa…
The Effect of Twisting Angle on the Electronic Properties and Electron Transport and Hall Effect in the Twisted Circular and Rectangular Graphene and Graphene/Boron-Nitride Channels