scholarly journals Tuning superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 363 (6431) ◽  
pp. 1059-1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Yankowitz ◽  
Shaowen Chen ◽  
Hryhoriy Polshyn ◽  
Yuxuan Zhang ◽  
K. Watanabe ◽  
...  

Materials with flat electronic bands often exhibit exotic quantum phenomena owing to strong correlations. An isolated low-energy flat band can be induced in bilayer graphene by simply rotating the layers by 1.1°, resulting in the appearance of gate-tunable superconducting and correlated insulating phases. In this study, we demonstrate that in addition to the twist angle, the interlayer coupling can be varied to precisely tune these phases. We induce superconductivity at a twist angle larger than 1.1°—in which correlated phases are otherwise absent—by varying the interlayer spacing with hydrostatic pressure. Our low-disorder devices reveal details about the superconducting phase diagram and its relationship to the nearby insulator. Our results demonstrate twisted bilayer graphene to be a distinctively tunable platform for exploring correlated states.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. eaaw9770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Codecido ◽  
Qiyue Wang ◽  
Ryan Koester ◽  
Shi Che ◽  
Haidong Tian ◽  
...  

The emergence of flat bands and correlated behaviors in “magic angle” twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) has sparked tremendous interest, though its many aspects are under intense debate. Here we report observation of both superconductivity and the Mott-like insulating state in a tBLG device with a twist angle of ~0.93°, which is smaller than the magic angle by 15%. At an electron concentration of ±5 electrons/moiré unit cell, we observe a narrow resistance peak with an activation energy gap ~0.1 meV. This indicates additional correlated insulating state, and is consistent with theory predicting a high-energy flat band. At doping of ±12 electrons/moiré unit cell we observe resistance peaks arising from the Dirac points in the spectrum. Our results reveal that the “magic” range of tBLG is in fact larger than what is previously expected, and provide a wealth of new information to help decipher the strongly correlated phenomena observed in tBLG.


Nano Research ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva A. A. Pogna ◽  
Xianchong Miao ◽  
Driele von Dreifus ◽  
Thonimar V. Alencar ◽  
Marcus V. O. Moutinho ◽  
...  

AbstractVan der Waals heterostructures obtained by artificially stacking two-dimensional crystals represent the frontier of material engineering, demonstrating properties superior to those of the starting materials. Fine control of the interlayer twist angle has opened new possibilities for tailoring the optoelectronic properties of these heterostructures. Twisted bilayer graphene with a strong interlayer coupling is a prototype of twisted heterostructure inheriting the intriguing electronic properties of graphene. Understanding the effects of the twist angle on its out-of-equilibrium optical properties is crucial for devising optoelectronic applications. With this aim, we here combine excitation-resolved hot photoluminescence with femtosecond transient absorption microscopy. The hot charge carrier distribution induced by photo-excitation results in peaked absorption bleaching and photo-induced absorption bands, both with pronounced twist angle dependence. Theoretical simulations of the electronic band structure and of the joint density of states enable to assign these bands to the blocking of interband transitions at the van Hove singularities and to photo-activated intersubband transitions. The tens of picoseconds relaxation dynamics of the observed bands is attributed to the angle-dependence of electron and phonon heat capacities of twisted bilayer graphene.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikhil Tilak ◽  
Xinyuan Lai ◽  
Shuang Wu ◽  
Zhenyuan Zhang ◽  
Mingyu Xu ◽  
...  

AbstractMagic-angle twisted bilayer graphene has emerged as a powerful platform for studying strongly correlated electron physics, owing to its almost dispersionless low-energy bands and the ability to tune the band filling by electrostatic gating. Techniques to control the twist angle between graphene layers have led to rapid experimental progress but improving sample quality is essential for separating the delicate correlated electron physics from disorder effects. Owing to the 2D nature of the system and the relatively low carrier density, the samples are highly susceptible to small doping inhomogeneity which can drastically modify the local potential landscape. This potential disorder is distinct from the twist angle variation which has been studied elsewhere. Here, by using low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy and planar tunneling junction measurements, we demonstrate that flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene can amplify small doping inhomogeneity that surprisingly leads to carrier confinement, which in graphene could previously only be realized in the presence of a strong magnetic field.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikhil Tilak ◽  
xinyuan lai ◽  
Shuang Wu ◽  
Zhenyuan Zhang ◽  
Mingyu Xu ◽  
...  

Abstract Magic angle twisted bilayer graphene has emerged as a powerful platform for studying strongly correlated electron physics, owing to its almost dispersionless low-energy bands and the ability to tune the band filling by electrostatic gating. Techniques to control the twist angle between graphene layers have led to rapid experimental progress, but improving sample quality is essential for separating the delicate correlation physics from disorder effects. Owing to the 2D nature of the system and the relatively low carrier density, the samples are highly susceptible to small doping inhomogeneity which can drastically modify the local potential landscape. This potential disorder is distinct from the twist-angle variation which has been studied elsewhere. Understanding and mitigating the effects of such disorder is important. Here, we demonstrate using low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy and planar tunneling junction measurements, how flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene can amplify small doping inhomogeneity leading to carrier confinement, thus obscuring magic-angle physics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomeng Liu ◽  
Cheng-Li Chiu ◽  
Jong Yeon Lee ◽  
Gelareh Farahi ◽  
Kenji Watanabe ◽  
...  

AbstractMoiré superlattices created by the twisted stacking of two-dimensional crystals can host electronic bands with flat energy dispersion in which enhanced interactions promote correlated electron states. The twisted double bilayer graphene (TDBG), where two Bernal bilayer graphene are stacked with a twist angle, is such a moiré system with tunable flat bands. Here, we use gate-tuned scanning tunneling spectroscopy to directly demonstrate the tunability of the band structure of TDBG with an electric field and to show spectroscopic signatures of electronic correlations and topology for its flat band. Our spectroscopic experiments are in agreement with a continuum model of TDBG band structure and reveal signatures of a correlated insulator gap at partial filling of its isolated flat band. The topological properties of this flat band are probed with the application of a magnetic field, which leads to valley polarization and the splitting of Chern bands with a large effective g-factor.


2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (24) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dante M. Kennes ◽  
Johannes Lischner ◽  
Christoph Karrasch

2012 ◽  
Vol 109 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taisuke Ohta ◽  
Jeremy T. Robinson ◽  
Peter J. Feibelman ◽  
Aaron Bostwick ◽  
Eli Rotenberg ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (27) ◽  
pp. 6928-6933 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Yao ◽  
Eryin Wang ◽  
Changhua Bao ◽  
Yiou Zhang ◽  
Kenan Zhang ◽  
...  

The interlayer coupling can be used to engineer the electronic structure of van der Waals heterostructures (superlattices) to obtain properties that are not possible in a single material. So far research in heterostructures has been focused on commensurate superlattices with a long-ranged Moiré period. Incommensurate heterostructures with rotational symmetry but not translational symmetry (in analogy to quasicrystals) are not only rare in nature, but also the interlayer interaction has often been assumed to be negligible due to the lack of phase coherence. Here we report the successful growth of quasicrystalline 30° twisted bilayer graphene (30°-tBLG), which is stabilized by the Pt(111) substrate, and reveal its electronic structure. The 30°-tBLG is confirmed by low energy electron diffraction and the intervalley double-resonance Raman mode at 1383 cm−1. Moreover, the emergence of mirrored Dirac cones inside the Brillouin zone of each graphene layer and a gap opening at the zone boundary suggest that these two graphene layers are coupled via a generalized Umklapp scattering mechanism—that is, scattering of a Dirac cone in one graphene layer by the reciprocal lattice vector of the other graphene layer. Our work highlights the important role of interlayer coupling in incommensurate quasicrystalline superlattices, thereby extending band structure engineering to incommensurate superstructures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 03004
Author(s):  
M.F.C. Martins Quintela ◽  
J.C.C. Guerra ◽  
S.M. João

In AA-stacked twisted bilayer graphene, the lower energy bands become completely flat when the twist angle passes through certain specific values: the so-called “magic angles”. The Dirac peak appears at zero energy due to the flattening of these bands when the twist angle is sufficiently small [1-3]. When a constant perpendicular magnetic field is applied, Landau levels start appearing as expected [5]. We used the Kernel Polynomial Method (KPM) [6] as implemented in KITE [7] to study the optical and electronic properties of these systems. The aim of this work is to analyze how the features of these quantities change with the twist angle in the presence of an uniform magnetic field.


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