Impacts of in-plane strain on commensurate graphene/hexagonal boron nitride superlattices

Abstract

Due to atomically thin structure, graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (G/hBN) heterostructures are intensively sensitive to the external mechanical forces and deformations being applied to their lattice structure. In particular, strain can lead to the modification of the electronic properties of G/hBN. Furthermore, moiré structures driven by misalignment of graphene and hBN layers introduce new features to the electronic behavior of G/hBN. Utilizing ab initio calculation, we study the strain-induced modification of the electronic properties of diverse stacking faults of G/hBN when applying in-plane strain on both layers, simultaneously. We observe that the interplay of few percent magnitude in-plane strain and moiré pattern in the experimentally applicable systems leads to considerable valley drifts, band gap modulation and enhancement of the substrate-induced Fermi velocity renormalization. Furthermore, we find that regardless of the strain alignment, the zigzag direction becomes more efficient for electronic transport, when applying in-plane non-equibiaxial strains. arXiv:1807.02847v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 30 Nov 2018

Double-Spiral Hexagonal Boron Nitride and Shear Strained Coalescence Boundary

“…46 This study on the formation conditions of shear strain may give an insight for the use of strained h-BN in electronic devices, 2D heterostructures, and especially as a platform for tuning the electronic structure of graphene. 47 Discussion. In this study, growth was carried out at atmospheric pressure with 200:5 sccm of Ar/H 2 flow, potentially leading to the overgrowth at the exposed edges of APBs.…”

“…Strained h-BN was reported to have different characteristics to pristine h-BN, for example, causing phonon shift 46 . This study on the formation conditions of shear strain may give an insight for the use of strained h-BN in electronic devices, 2D heterostructures, and especially as a platform for tuning the electronic structure of graphene 47 .…”

Influence of Hexagonal Boron Nitride on Electronic Structure of Graphene

“…In particular, great efforts have been devoted to the clarification of the band structure modulation around the Dirac cone induced by the hBN superlattice potential [13,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. It is reported that a band gap as large as around 40 meV emerges if graphene/hBN is nearly 0 • aligned, and the gap varies with respect to the twisting angle between the two layers [18,36,38,39,42,[45][46][47][48].…”