Understanding how the electron spin is coupled to orbital degrees of freedom, such as a valley degree of freedom in solid-state systems, is central to applications in spin-based electronics and quantum computation. Recent developments in the preparation of electrostatically-confined quantum dots in gapped bilayer graphene (BLG) enable to study the low-energy single-electron spectra in BLG quantum dots, which is crucial for potential spin and spin-valley qubit operations. Here, we present the observation of the spin-valley coupling in bilayer graphene quantum dots in the single-electron regime. By making use of highly-tunable double quantum dot devices we achieve an energy resolution allowing us to resolve the lifting of the fourfold spin and valley degeneracy by a Kane-Mele type spin-orbit coupling of ≈ 60 μeV. Furthermore, we find an upper limit of a potentially disorder-induced mixing of the $$K$$ K and $$K^{\prime}$$ K ′ states below 20 μeV.

We report on finite bias spectroscopy measurements of the two-electron spectrum in a gate defined bilayer graphene (BLG) quantum dot for varying magnetic fields. The spin and valley degree of freedom in BLG give rise to multiplets of six orbital symmetric and ten orbital antisymmetric states. We find that orbital symmetric states are lower in energy and separated by ≈ 0.4-0.8 meV from orbital antisymmetric states. The symmetric multiplet exhibits an additional energy splitting of its six states of ≈ 0.15-0.5 meV due to lattice scale interactions. The experimental observations are supported by theoretical calculations, which allow to determine that intervalley scattering and "current-current" interaction constants are of the same magnitude in BLG.

The importance of controlling both the charge carrier density and the band gap of a semiconductor cannot be overstated, as it opens the doors to a wide range of applications, including, for example, highly‐tunable transistors, photodetectors, and lasers. Bernal‐stacked bilayer graphene is a unique van‐der‐Waals material that allows tuning of the band gap by an out‐of‐plane electric field. Although the first evidence of the tunable gap is already found 10 years ago, it took until recent to fabricate sufficiently clean heterostructures where the electrically induced gap can be used to fully suppress transport or confine charge carriers. Here, a detailed study of the tunable band gap in gated bilayer graphene characterized by temperature‐activated transport and finite‐bias spectroscopy measurements is presented. The latter method allows comparing different gate materials and device technologies, which directly affects the disorder potential in bilayer graphene. It is shown that graphite‐gated bilayer graphene exhibits extremely low disorder and as good as no subgap states resulting in ultraclean tunable band gaps up to 120 meV. The size of the band gaps are in good agreement with theory and allow complete current suppression making a wide range of semiconductor applications possible.