Understanding and tuning correlated states is of great interest and significance to modern condensed matter physics. The recent discovery of unconventional superconductivity and Mott-like insulating states in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) presents a unique platform to study correlation phenomena, in which the Coulomb energy dominates over the quenched kinetic energy as a result of hybridized flat bands. Extending this approach to the case of twisted multilayer graphene would allow even higher control over the band structure because of the reduced symmetry of the system. Here, we study electronic transport properties in twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG, bilayer on top of monolayer graphene heterostructure). We observed the formation of van Hove singularities which are highly tunable by twist angle and displacement field and can cause strong correlation effects under optimum conditions, including superconducting states. We provide basic theoretical interpretation of the observed electronic structure.Van der Waals heterostructures technology provides a variety of tuning knobs, including twist angle, displacement field, and stacking order, for band engineering by precise stacking of one atomically thin crystal onto another 1 . The lattice constant mismatch and relative twist angle give rise to a moiré superlattice, where, under some conditions, interlayer hybridization leads to the formation of an isolated low energy flat band, which quenches the kinetic energy of electronic system. Such low-energy subbands have been realised in several structures and emergent phenomena have been reported, including Mott-like insulators 2 , unconventional superconductivity [3][4][5] and ferromagnetism 6,7 in twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) and twisted double bilayer graphene (tDBLG) [8][9][10][11] . Similar correlated states have also been reported in ABC-trilayer graphene (TLG) superlattice on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and rhombohedral stacked graphite films [12][13][14] .In this work, we study small-angle twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG) van der Waals heterostructures, where a monolayer graphene (MLG) and bilayer graphene (BLG) are stacked and rotated by a small angle with respect to each other. Compared to tBLG, more tuning knobs are expected in tTLG, since the band structures in multi-layer graphene are more tunable than that of the monolayer counterpart [15][16][17][18] . In particular, there naturally exists two stacking orders in trilayer graphene, Bernal (ABA)-stacking with mirror symmetry and rhombohedral (ABC)-stacking with inversion symmetry. The former is semimetallic, while the latter is known to be semiconducting with
At very small twist angles of ∼0.1°, bilayer graphene exhibits a strain-accompanied lattice reconstruction that results in submicron-size triangular domains with the standard, Bernal stacking. If the interlayer bias is applied to open an energy gap inside the domain regions making them insulating, such marginally twisted bilayer graphene is expected to remain conductive due to a triangular network of chiral one-dimensional states hosted by domain boundaries. Here we study electron transport through this helical network and report giant Aharonov-Bohm oscillations that reach in amplitude up to 50% of resistivity and persist to temperatures above 100 K. At liquid helium temperatures, the network exhibits another kind of oscillations that appear as a function of carrier density and are accompanied by a sign-changing Hall effect. The latter are attributed to consecutive population of the narrow minibands formed by the network of one-dimensional states inside the gap.
Magnetic fields force ballistic electrons injected from a narrow contact to move along skipping orbits and form caustics. This leads to pronounced resistance peaks at nearby voltage probes as electrons are effectively focused inside them, a phenomenon known as magnetic focusing. This can be used not only for the demonstration of ballistic transport but also to study the electronic structure of metals. Here we use magnetic focusing to probe narrow bands in graphene bilayers twisted at ~2°. Their minibands are found to support long-range ballistic transport limited at low temperatures by intrinsic electron-electron scattering. A voltage bias between the layers causes strong valley splitting and allows selective focusing for different valleys, which is of interest for using this degree of freedom in frequently-discussed valleytronics.Crystallographic alignment of atomically thin crystals stacked together in a van der Waals heterostructure is a powerful tool that enables fine tuning of their electronic spectra. For crystals with similar honeycomb lattices the spectra are modified by the presence of a long-range interference (moiré) pattern with a period lS dependent on the twist angle θ between the layers (1-18), see Fig 1A. The additional spatial periodicity reduces the size of the Brillouin zone and introduces secondary Dirac points, as illustrated in Fig. 1B. So far, the most pronounced twist-engineered changes in the electronic properties of 2D crystals have been achieved in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG), where the twist at discrete 'magic' angles results in narrow bands, periodically modulated interlayer hybridisation and strong enhancement of electron correlations, leading to superconductivity and Mott insulator transitions (6-8). At larger θ, the TBG spectrum corresponds to a metal with several minibands at each K and K' valley in the Brillouin zone (Fig. 1B). Electronic properties of such a metal are expected to be quite different from the behaviour of Dirac electrons in monolayer or bilayer (aligned to Bernal stacking) graphene but so far remain largely unexplored. Here we use transverse focusing of electrons in a perpendicular magnetic field (TMF) (12,(19)(20)(21)(22)(23) to probe the properties of moiré minibands in TBG and demonstrate an exceptionally high quality of the 'artificial metal' in TBG, as well as a possibility to use vertical displacement field, D, to break the valley degeneracy in the two constituent layers and selectively enhance transport in one of the valleys.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.