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2D materials

Twisted growth by design

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 1215–1216 (2022)Cite this article

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Twisted bilayer graphene is epitaxially grown between two adjacent Cu(111) surfaces, with the twist angle controlled by the rotation of the Cu foils as designed.

An artificial crystal with lattice structures that can be tuned arbitrarily provides an exciting platform for flexibly programming material properties. Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) is a system where one layer is twisted relative to the other at a twist angle (θ) that is broadly tunable. Depending on θ, a moiré superlattice with a specific crystal symmetry and lattice parameter appears at the van der Waals interface. The TBG structure becomes non-centrosymmetric with finite θ and chiral for θ ≠ 30°, producing interesting properties, such as chiral plasmons1 and the chiro-optical response2, that are absent in non-twisted graphene layers. In addition, the moiré periodic potentials modulate the electronic band structures to host superconductivity and to form a Mott insulator at a specific θ close to 1.1° (ref. 3). Researchers have been motivated by the continuous discovery of the surprising properties of these artificial crystals and have been exploring the potential electronic and optoelectronic applications based on twisted graphene films. Large-scale TBG with a twist angle that can be tuned on demand is a prerequisite for the applications, which researchers are eagerly pursuing4. TBG samples with atomically clean van der Waals interfaces are typically fabricated by assembling mechanically exfoliated flakes, but this process has limitations in terms of reproducibility and the sizes of fabricated samples that are usually several tens of micrometres. While direct-growth methods would be the simplest way to achieve large-scale layers, the precise control of θ is considered to be challenging with the direct-growth methods currently used. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Can Liu and co-workers report5 a simple chemical vapour deposition (CVD) technique for growing centimetre-scale TBG structures with arbitrarily controlled θ.

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Fig. 1: Epitaxial growth of TBG.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Van der Waals Quantum Solids, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Seong-Jun Yang & Cheol-Joo Kim

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Seong-Jun Yang & Cheol-Joo Kim

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  1. Seong-Jun Yang
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  2. Cheol-Joo Kim
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Correspondence to Cheol-Joo Kim.

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Yang, SJ., Kim, CJ. Twisted growth by design. Nat. Mater. 21, 1215–1216 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01378-z

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