Introduction of a twist between layers of two-dimensional materials which leads to the formation of a moiré pattern is an emerging pathway to tune the electronic, vibrational and optical properties. The fascinating properties of these systems is often linked to large-scale structural reconstruction of the moiré pattern. Hence, an essential first step in the theoretical study of these systems is the construction and structural relaxation of the atoms in the moiré superlattice. We present the Twister package, a collection of tools that constructs commensurate superlattices for any combination of 2D materials and also helps perform structural relaxations of the moiré superlattice. Twister constructs commensurate moiré superlattices using the coincidence lattice method and provides an interface to perform structural relaxations using classical forcefields.
Realizing van der Waals (vdW) epitaxy in the 80s represents a breakthrough that circumvents the stringent lattice matching and processing compatibility requirements in conventional covalent heteroepitaxy. However, due to the weak vdW interactions, there is little control over film qualities by the substrate. Typically, discrete domains with a spread of misorientation angles are formed, limiting the applicability of vdW epitaxy. Here we report the epitaxial growth of monocrystalline, covalent Cr5Te8 2D crystals on monolayer vdW WSe2 by chemical vapor deposition, driven by interfacial dative bon…
Robust structural superlubricity of twisted graphene bilayer and domain walls between commensurate moiré pattern domains from first-principles calculations
Dynamics of a jointly commensurate moiré charge density wave
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, School of Physics and Astronomy, and Zhangjiang Institute for Advanced Study, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院、张江高等研究院、李政道研究所）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；SIMES, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（SLAC国家加速器实验室同步辐射实验站）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University（北京大学物理学院量子材料科学中心）；Pohang Accelerator Laboratory（浦项加速器实验室）
Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures formed by 2D atomic crystals provide a powerful approach towards designer condensed matter systems. Incommensurate heterobilayers with small twisting and/or lattice mismatch lead to the interesting concept of Moiré superlattice, where the atomic registry is locally indistinguishable from commensurate bilayers but has local-to-local variation over long range. Here we show that such Moiré superlattice can lead to periodic modulation of local topological order in vdW heterobilayers formed by two massive Dirac materials. By tuning the vdW heterojunction from no…
Artificially constructed van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) provide an ideal platform for realizing emerging quantum phenomena in condensed matter physics. Two methods for building vdWHs have been developed: stacking two-dimensional (2D) materials into a bilayer structure with different lattice constants, or with different orientations. The interlayer coupling stemming from commensurate or incommensurate superlattice pattern plays an important role in vdWHs for modulating the band structures and generating new electronic states. In this article, we review a series of novel quantum states d…
Moiré superlattices in graphene supported on various substrates have opened a new avenue to engineer graphene's electronic properties. Yet, the exact crystallographic structure on which their band structure depends remains highly debated. In this scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory study, we have analysed graphene samples grown on multilayer graphene prepared onto SiC and on the close-packed surfaces of Re and Ir with ultra-high precision. We resolve small-angle twists and shears in graphene, and identify large unit cells comprising more than 1,000 carbon atoms and exhi…
Moiré patterns can lead to fundamentally new electronic behavior when formed between two atomic lattices slightly shifted with respect to each other. A solid is however not just characterized by the atomic lattice, but also by charge or magnetic excitations that do not need to be commensurate to the lattice. This raises the question if one can obtain a moiré by combining periodic electronic modulations and the atomic lattice. Here we report on the discovery of a one-dimensional charge density wave (1D-CDW) which is a moiré pattern between the atomic lattice and a hot spot for electronic scatte…
Moiré superlattices from stacks of van der Waals materials offer an exciting arena in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science. Typically, these moiré superlattices consist of materials with identical or similar structures, and the long moiré period arises from a small twist angle or lattice mismatch. In this article, we discuss that long moiré period appears in a new moiré system by stacking two dissimilar van der Waals layers with large lattice mismatch, resulting in couplings between moiré bands from remote valleys in the momentum space. In this system, the first layer i…
Van der Waals layered materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), are an exciting class of materials with weak interlayer bonding which enables one to create van der Waals heterostructures (vdWH). Recent work has shown that control of the twist angle between layers can have a dramatic effect on vdWH properties. For TMD vdWH, twist angle has been treated solely through the use of rigid-lattice moiré patterns. No atomic reconstruction, i.e. any rearrangement of atoms within the individual layers, has been reported experimentally to date. Here we demonstrate that vdWH of MoSe2/WSe…
We demonstrate that there exists a continuum Hamiltonian $H(\bf{r},\bf{p})$ that is formally the operator equivalent of the general tight-binding method, inheriting the associativity and Hermiticity of the latter operator. This provides a powerful and controlled method of obtaining effective Hamiltonians via Taylor expansion with respect to momentum and, optionally, deformation fields. In particular, for fundamentally non-perturbative defects, such as twist faults and partial dislocations, the method allows the deformation field to be retained to all orders, providing an efficient scheme for t…
The properties of van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures are drastically altered by a tunable moiré superlattice arising from periodic variations of atomic alignment between the layers. Exciton diffusion represents an important channel of energy transport in semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). While early studies performed on TMD heterobilayers have suggested that carriers and excitons exhibit long diffusion lengths, a rich variety of scenarios can exist. In a moiré crystal with a large supercell size and deep potential, interlayer excitons may be completely localized. As the…
We present a general method to analyze the topological nature of the domain boundary connectivity that appeared in relaxed moiré superlattice patterns at the interface of 2-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials. At large enough moiré lengths, all moiré systems relax into commensurated 2D domains separated by networks of dislocation lines. The nodes of the 2D dislocation line network can be considered as vortex-like topological defects. We find that a simple analogy to common topological systems with an $S^1$ order parameter, such as a superconductor or planar ferromagnet, cannot corre…
We study the atomic and electronic structures of the commensurate double moiré superlattices in fully relaxed twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) nearly aligned with the hexagonal boron nitride (BN). The single-particle effective Hamiltonian ($\hat{H}^0$) taking into account the relaxation effect and the full moiré Hamiltonian introduced by BN has been built for TBG/BN. The mean-field (MF) band structures of the self-consistent Hartree-Fock (SCHF) ground states at different number ($ν$) of filled flat bands relative to the charge neutrality point (CNP) are obtained based on $\hat{H}^0$ in the plane…
