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A twist in the bid to probe electrons in solids

Two microscopy techniques have been merged into a tool for twisting ultrathin sheets of atoms relative to each other. The approach offers a new angle for studying the electronic properties of exotic layered materials.
  1. Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau

    1. Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau is in the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology – CNRS, 91120 Palaiseau, France.

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In 2018, scientists took two sheets of single-atom-thick carbon, called graphene, twisted them relative to each other by a ‘magic’ angle and observed a remarkable thing: the system conducted electricity without any resistance1. Efforts to characterize the properties of this intriguing twisted bilayer graphene began immediately, but the studies proved challenging2. Although it’s tempting to imagine that the fabrication process is as easy as twisting two sheets of paper relative to each other, it’s actually highly complex, because the fully aligned configuration is more stable than a twisted one. Writing in Nature, Inbar et al.3 report an exciting experimental technique for controlling the angular alignment of such layers in situ — perhaps the closest we’ll come to the ideal scenario, equivalent to twisting two sheets of paper.

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Nature 614, 628-629 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00474-7

References

  1. Cao, Y. et al. Nature 556, 43–50 (2018).

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  2. Uri, A. et al. Nature 581, 47–52 (2020).

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  3. Inbar, A. et al. Nature 614, 682–687 (2023).

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  4. Koren, E. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 11, 752–757 (2016).

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  5. Chari, T., Ribeiro-Palau, R., Dean, C. R. & Shepard, K. Nano Lett. 16, 4477–4482 (2016).

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  6. Yankowitz, M. et al. Science 363, 1059–1064 (2019).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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