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VAN DER WAALS HETEROSTRUCTURES

Flatland, lineland and dotland

Nature Materials volume 19, pages 1044–1045 (2020)Cite this article

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Correlated real-space imaging and optical measurements of twisted MoSe2/WSe2 bilayers reveal strain-induced modulations of the moiré potential landscape, tuning arrays of 0D traps into 1D stripes and leading to substantial changes in the optical response of the heterostructures.

The success of modern information technology is built on the ability to confine electrons in semiconductors over the nanometre scale. Alternative to mature technologies based on silicon or III–V semiconductors, the ability to combine two-dimensional (2D) layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) in van der Waals heterostructures1 has recently opened inexpensive pathways to obtain on-demand optoelectronic properties by confining electrons and excitons — electron–hole pairs bound by Coulomb interactions — in arrays of zero-dimensional (0D) potential wells formed by atomic moiré patterns, which are periodic variations of the alignment between atoms in adjacent layers. Despite several promising results2,3,4,5, the influence of strain and other sample imperfections on the geometry of the moiré potential landscape and optical behaviour of TMDC heterostructures has not yet been directly investigated. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Yusong Bai and collaborators6 report correlated real-space imaging of strain-induced one-dimensional (1D) moiré patterns and optical measurements of the corresponding excitonic emission in MoSe2/WSe2 heterobilayers, showing that strain engineering can be used as an effective route to create anisotropic potentials for electrons on the nanoscale and tune the optical response of van der Waals heterostructures.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of moiré patterns formed in TMDC heterostructures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Long Zhang & Hui Deng

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  1. Long Zhang
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  2. Hui Deng
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Correspondence to Hui Deng.

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Zhang, L., Deng, H. Flatland, lineland and dotland. Nat. Mater. 19, 1044–1045 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0770-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0770-0

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