Designing Moiré Patterns by Strain

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Escudero, Federico, Sinner, Andreas, Zhan, Zhen, Pantaleón, Pierre A., Guinea, Francisco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Escudero, Federico
Sinner, Andreas
Zhan, Zhen
Pantaleón, Pierre A.
Guinea, Francisco
author_facet Escudero, Federico
Sinner, Andreas
Zhan, Zhen
Pantaleón, Pierre A.
Guinea, Francisco
contents Experiments conducted on two-dimensional twisted materials have revealed a plethora of moiré patterns with different forms and shapes. The formation of these patterns is usually attributed to the presence of small strains in the samples, which typically arise during their fabrication. In this work we find that the superlattice structure of such systems actually depends crucially on the interplay between twist and strain. For systems composed of honeycomb lattices, we show that this can lead to the formation of practically any moiré geometry, even if each lattice is only slightly distorted. As a result, we show that under strain the moiré Brillouin zone is not a stretched irregular hexagon, but rather a primitive cell that changes according to the geometry of the strained moiré vectors. We identify the conditions for the formation of hexagonal moiré patterns arising solely due to shear or biaxial strain, thus opening the possibility of engineering moiré patterns solely by strain. Moreover, we study the electronic properties in such moiré patterns and find that the strain tends to suppress the formation of the flat moiré bands, even in the strain-induced hexagonal patterns analogous to those obtained by the twist only. Our work explains the plethora of moiré patterns observed in experiments, and provides a solid theoretical foundation from which one can design moiré patterns by strain.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_08671
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Designing Moiré Patterns by Strain
Escudero, Federico
Sinner, Andreas
Zhan, Zhen
Pantaleón, Pierre A.
Guinea, Francisco
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Experiments conducted on two-dimensional twisted materials have revealed a plethora of moiré patterns with different forms and shapes. The formation of these patterns is usually attributed to the presence of small strains in the samples, which typically arise during their fabrication. In this work we find that the superlattice structure of such systems actually depends crucially on the interplay between twist and strain. For systems composed of honeycomb lattices, we show that this can lead to the formation of practically any moiré geometry, even if each lattice is only slightly distorted. As a result, we show that under strain the moiré Brillouin zone is not a stretched irregular hexagon, but rather a primitive cell that changes according to the geometry of the strained moiré vectors. We identify the conditions for the formation of hexagonal moiré patterns arising solely due to shear or biaxial strain, thus opening the possibility of engineering moiré patterns solely by strain. Moreover, we study the electronic properties in such moiré patterns and find that the strain tends to suppress the formation of the flat moiré bands, even in the strain-induced hexagonal patterns analogous to those obtained by the twist only. Our work explains the plethora of moiré patterns observed in experiments, and provides a solid theoretical foundation from which one can design moiré patterns by strain.
title Designing Moiré Patterns by Strain
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.08671