Stacking transition in bilayer graphene caused by thermally activated rotation

Abstract

Crystallographic alignment between two-dimensional crystals in van der Waals heterostructures brought a number of profound physical phenomena, including observation of Hofstadter butterfly and topological currents, and promising novel applications, such as resonant tunnelling transistors. Here, by probing the electronic density of states in graphene using graphene-hexagonal boron nitride tunnelling transistors, we demonstrate a structural transition of bilayer graphene from incommensurate twisted stacking state into a commensurate AB stacking due to a macroscopic graphene self-rotation. This structural transition is accompanied by a topological transition in the reciprocal space and by pseudospin texturing. The stacking transition is driven by van der Waals interaction energy of the two graphene layers and is thermally activated by unpinning the microscopic chemical adsorbents which are then removed by the self-cleaning of graphene.

arXiv comment13 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• 30${}^{\circ }$-twisted bilayer graphene quasicrystals from chemical vapor deposition
• Transport measurements in twisted bilayer graphene: Electron-phonon coupling and Landau level crossing
• Ultrafast unbalanced electron distributions in quasicrystalline 30° twisted bilayer graphene
• HHG-laser-based time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of quantum materials
• Linking interlayer twist angle to geometrical parameters of self-assembled folded graphene structures
• Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy of nanoscale twisted bilayer graphene
• Time-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy of Quantum Materials Using High Harmonic Generation: Probing Electron-Phonon Interactions and Non-Equilibrium Dynamics