Bilayer graphene is a material consisting of two layers of graphene. One of the first reports of bilayer graphene was in the seminal 2004 Science paper by Geim and colleagues, [1] in which they described devices "which contained just one, two, or three atomic layers"
Bilayer graphene can exist in the AB, or Bernal-stacked form, [2] where half of the atoms lie directly over the center of a hexagon in the lower graphene sheet, and half of the atoms lie over an atom, or, less commonly, in the AA form, in which the layers are exactly aligned. [3] In Bernal stacked graphene, twin boundaries are common; transitioning from AB to BA stacking. [4] Twisted layers, where one layer is rotated relative to the other, have also been extensively studied.
Quantum Monte Carlo methods have been used to calculate the binding energies of AA- and AB-stacked bilayer graphene, which are 11.5(9) and 17.7(9) meV per atom, respectively. [5] This is consistent with the observation that the AB-stacked structure is more stable than the AA-stacked structure.
Bilayer graphene can be made by exfoliation from graphite [6] or by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). [7] In 2016, Rodney S. Ruoff and colleagues showed that large single-crystal bilayer graphene could be produced by oxygen-activated chemical vapour deposition. [8] Later in the same year a Korean group reported the synthesis of wafer-scale single-crystal AB-stacked bilayer graphene [9]
Like monolayer graphene, bilayer graphene has a zero bandgap and thus behaves like a semimetal. In 2007, researchers predicted that a bandgap could be introduced if an electric displacement field were applied to the two layers: a so-called tunable band gap. [10] An experimental demonstration of a tunable bandgap in bilayer graphene came in 2009. [6] In 2015 researchers observed 1D ballistic electron conducting channels at bilayer graphene domain walls. [11] Another group showed that the band gap of bilayer films on silicon carbide could be controlled by selectively adjusting the carrier concentration. [12]
In 2014 researchers described the emergence of complex electronic states in bilayer graphene, notably the fractional quantum Hall effect and showed that this could be tuned by an electric field. [13] [14] [15] In 2017 the observation of an even-denominator fractional quantum Hall state was reported in bilayer graphene. [16]
Bilayer graphene showed the potential to realize a Bose–Einstein condensate of excitons. [17] Electrons and holes are fermions, but when they form an exciton, they become bosons, allowing Bose-Einstein condensation to occur. Exciton condensates in bilayer systems have been shown theoretically to carry a supercurrent. [18]
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero of MIT and colleagues from Harvard and the National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan, have reported the discovery of superconductivity in bilayer graphene with a twist angle of 1.1° between the two layers. The discovery was announced in Nature in March 2018. [19] The findings confirmed predictions made in 2011 by Allan MacDonald and Rafi Bistritzer that the amount of energy a free electron would require to tunnel between two graphene sheets radically changes at this angle. [20] The graphene bilayer was prepared from exfoliated monolayers of graphene, with the second layer being manually rotated to a set angle with respect to the first layer. A critical temperature of was observed with such specimens in the original paper (with newer papers reporting slightly higher temperatures). [21]
Jarillo-Herrero has suggested that it may be possible to “...... imagine making a superconducting transistor out of graphene, which you can switch on and off, from superconducting to insulating. That opens many possibilities for quantum devices.” [22] The study of such lattices has been dubbed "twistronics" and was inspired by earlier theoretical treatments of layered assemblies of graphene. [23]
Bilayer graphene can be used to construct field effect transistors [24] [25] or tunneling field effect transistors, [26] exploiting the small energy gap. However, the energy gap is smaller than 250 meV and therefore requires the use of low operating voltage (< 250 mV), which is too small to obtain reasonable performance for a field effect transistor, [24] but is very suited to the operation of tunnel field effect transistors, which according to theory from a paper in 2009 can operate with an operating voltage of only 100 mV. [26]
In 2016 researchers proposed the use of bilayer graphene to increase the output voltage of tunnel transistors (TT). They operate at a lower operating voltage range (150 mV) than silicon transistors (500 mV). Bilayer graphene's energy band is unlike that of most semiconductors in that the electrons around the edges form a (high density) van Hove singularity. This supplies sufficient electrons to increase current flow across the energy barrier. Bilayer graphene transistors use "electrical" rather than "chemical" doping. [27]
In 2017 an international group of researchers showed that bilayer graphene could act as a single-phase mixed conductor which exhibited Li diffusion faster than in graphite by an order of magnitude. [28] In combination with the fast electronic conduction of graphene sheets, this system offers both ionic and electronic conductivity within the same single-phase solid material. This has important implications for energy storage devices such as lithium ion batteries.
Researchers from the City University of New York have shown that sheets of bilayer graphene on silicon carbide temporarily become harder than diamond upon impact with the tip of an atomic force microscope. [29] This was attributed to a graphite-diamond transition, and the behavior appeared to be unique to bilayer graphene. This could have applications in personal armor.
Hybridization processes change the intrinsic properties of graphene and/or induce poor interfaces. In 2014 a general route to obtain unstacked graphene via facile, templated, catalytic growth was announced. The resulting material has a specific surface area of 1628 m2 g-1, is electrically conductive and has a mesoporous structure. [30]
The material is made with a mesoporous nanoflake template. Graphene layers are deposited onto the template. The carbon atoms accumulate in the mesopores, forming protuberances that act as spacers to prevent stacking. The protuberance density is approximately 5.8×1014 m−2. Graphene is deposited on both sides of the flakes. [30]
During CVD synthesis the protuberances produce intrinsically unstacked double-layer graphene after the removal of the nanoflakes. The presence of such protuberances on the surface can weaken the π-π interactions between graphene layers and thus reduce stacking. The bilayer graphene shows a specific surface area of 1628 m2/g, a pore size ranging from 2 to 7 nm and a total pore volume of 2.0 cm3/g. [30]
Using bilayer graphene as cathode material for a lithium sulfur battery yielded reversible capacities of 1034 and 734 mA h/g at discharge rates of 5 and 10 C, respectively. After 1000 cycles reversible capacities of some 530 and 380 mA h/g were retained at 5 and 10 C, with coulombic efficiency constants at 96 and 98%, respectively. [30]
Electrical conductivity of 438 S/cm was obtained. Even after the infiltration of sulfur, electrical conductivity of 107 S cm/1 was retained. The graphene's unique porous structure allowed the effective storage of sulfur in the interlayer space, which gives rise to an efficient connection between the sulfur and graphene and prevents the diffusion of polysulfides into the electrolyte. [30]
Hyperspectral global Raman imaging [31] is an accurate and rapid technique to spatially characterize product quality. The vibrational modes of a system characterize it, providing information on stoichiometry, composition, morphology, stress and number of layers. Monitoring graphene's G and D peaks (around 1580 and 1360 cm−1) [32] [33] intensity gives direct information on the number of layers of the sample.
It has been shown that the two graphene layers can withstand important strain or doping mismatch [34] which ultimately should lead to their exfoliation.
Quantitative determination of bilayer graphene's structural parameters---such as surface roughness, inter- and intralayer spacings, stacking order, and interlayer twist---is obtainable using 3D electron diffraction [35] [36]
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. The name is derived from "graphite" and the suffix -ene, reflecting the fact that the graphite allotrope of carbon contains numerous double bonds.
Phaedon Avouris is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
A two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) is a scientific model in solid-state physics. It is an electron gas that is free to move in two dimensions, but tightly confined in the third. This tight confinement leads to quantized energy levels for motion in the third direction, which can then be ignored for most problems. Thus the electrons appear to be a 2D sheet embedded in a 3D world. The analogous construct of holes is called a two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG), and such systems have many useful and interesting properties.
A Wigner crystal is the solid (crystalline) phase of electrons first predicted by Eugene Wigner in 1934. A gas of electrons moving in a uniform, inert, neutralizing background will crystallize and form a lattice if the electron density is less than a critical value. This is because the potential energy dominates the kinetic energy at low densities, so the detailed spatial arrangement of the electrons becomes important. To minimize the potential energy, the electrons form a bcc lattice in 3D, a triangular lattice in 2D and an evenly spaced lattice in 1D. Most experimentally observed Wigner clusters exist due to the presence of the external confinement, i.e. external potential trap. As a consequence, deviations from the b.c.c or triangular lattice are observed. A crystalline state of the 2D electron gas can also be realized by applying a sufficiently strong magnetic field. However, it is still not clear whether it is the Wigner crystallization that has led to observation of insulating behaviour in magnetotransport measurements on 2D electron systems, since other candidates are present, such as Anderson localization.
Sankar Das Sarma is an India-born American theoretical condensed matter physicist, who has worked in the broad research topics of theoretical physics, condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, quantum physics, and quantum information. He has been a member of the department of physics at University of Maryland, College Park since 1980.
A topological insulator is a material whose interior behaves as an electrical insulator while its surface behaves as an electrical conductor, meaning that electrons can only move along the surface of the material.
A trion is a localized excitation which consists of three charged particles. A negative trion consists of two electrons and one hole and a positive trion consists of two holes and one electron. The trion itself is a quasiparticle and is somewhat similar to an exciton, which is a complex of one electron and one hole. The trion has a ground singlet state (spin S = 1/2) and an excited triplet state (S = 3/2). Here singlet and triplet degeneracies originate not from the whole system but from the two identical particles in it. The half-integer spin value distinguishes trions from excitons in many phenomena; for example, energy states of trions, but not excitons, are split in an applied magnetic field. Trion states were predicted theoretically in 1958; they were observed experimentally in 1993 in CdTe/Cd1−xZnxTe quantum wells, and later in various other optically excited semiconductor structures. There are experimental proofs of their existence in nanotubes supported by theoretical studies. Despite numerous reports of experimental trion observations in different semiconductor heterostructures, there are serious concerns on the exact physical nature of the detected complexes. The originally foreseen 'true' trion particle has a delocalized wavefunction (at least at the scales of several Bohr radii) while recent studies reveal significant binding from charged impurities in real semiconductor quantum wells.
Silicene is a two-dimensional allotrope of silicon, with a hexagonal honeycomb structure similar to that of graphene. Contrary to graphene, silicene is not flat, but has a periodically buckled topology; the coupling between layers in silicene is much stronger than in multilayered graphene; and the oxidized form of silicene, 2D silica, has a very different chemical structure from graphene oxide.
Bose–Einstein condensation can occur in quasiparticles, particles that are effective descriptions of collective excitations in materials. Some have integer spins and can be expected to obey Bose–Einstein statistics like traditional particles. Conditions for condensation of various quasiparticles have been predicted and observed. The topic continues to be an active field of study.
Valleytronics is an experimental area in semiconductors that exploits local extrema ("valleys") in the electronic band structure. Certain semiconductors have multiple "valleys" in the electronic band structure of the first Brillouin zone, and are known as multivalley semiconductors. Valleytronics is the technology of control over the valley degree of freedom, a local maximum/minimum on the valence/conduction band, of such multivalley semiconductors.
Transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD or TMDC) monolayers are atomically thin semiconductors of the type MX2, with M a transition-metal atom (Mo, W, etc.) and X a chalcogen atom (S, Se, or Te). One layer of M atoms is sandwiched between two layers of X atoms. They are part of the large family of so-called 2D materials, named so to emphasize their extraordinary thinness. For example, a MoS2 monolayer is only 6.5 Å thick. The key feature of these materials is the interaction of large atoms in the 2D structure as compared with first-row transition-metal dichalcogenides, e.g., WTe2 exhibits anomalous giant magnetoresistance and superconductivity.
A two-dimensional semiconductor is a type of natural semiconductor with thicknesses on the atomic scale. Geim and Novoselov et al. initiated the field in 2004 when they reported a new semiconducting material graphene, a flat monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a 2D honeycomb lattice. A 2D monolayer semiconductor is significant because it exhibits stronger piezoelectric coupling than traditionally employed bulk forms. This coupling could enable applications. One research focus is on designing nanoelectronic components by the use of graphene as electrical conductor, hexagonal boron nitride as electrical insulator, and a transition metal dichalcogenide as semiconductor.
James (Jim) P. Eisenstein is the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the physics department of California Institute of Technology.
Eva Yocheved Andrei is an American condensed matter physicist, a Distinguished Professor, and a Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on emergent properties of matter arising from the collective behavior of many particles, especially low-dimensional phenomena under low temperatures and high magnetic fields.
Graphene is a semimetal whose conduction and valence bands meet at the Dirac points, which are six locations in momentum space, the vertices of its hexagonal Brillouin zone, divided into two non-equivalent sets of three points. The two sets are labeled K and K'. The sets give graphene a valley degeneracy of gv = 2. By contrast, for traditional semiconductors the primary point of interest is generally Γ, where momentum is zero. Four electronic properties separate it from other condensed matter systems.
Twistronics is the study of how the angle between layers of two-dimensional materials can change their electrical properties. Materials such as bilayer graphene have been shown to have vastly different electronic behavior, ranging from non-conductive to superconductive, that depends sensitively on the angle between the layers. The term was first introduced by the research group of Efthimios Kaxiras at Harvard University in their theoretical treatment of graphene superlattices.
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero is a Spanish physicist and current Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Antonio Helio de Castro Neto is a Brazilian-born physicist. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials at the National University of Singapore. He is a condensed matter theorist known for his work in the theory of metals, magnets, superconductors, graphene and two-dimensional materials. He is a distinguished professor in the Departments of Materials Science Engineering, and Physics and a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003. In 2011 he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The term heterostrain was proposed in 2018 in the context of materials science to simplify the designation of possible strain situations in van der Waals heterostructures where two two-dimensional materials are stacked on top of each other. These layers can experience the same deformation (homostrain) or different deformations (heterostrain). In addition to twist, heterostrain can have important consequences on the electronic and optical properties of the resulting structure. As such, the control of heterostrain is emerging as a sub-field of straintronics in which the properties of 2D materials are controlled by strain. Recent works have reported a deterministic control of heterostrain by sample processing or with the tip of an AFM of particular interest in twisted heterostructures. Heterostrain alone has also been identified as a parameter to tune the electronic properties of van der Waals structures as for example in twisted graphene layers with biaxial heterostrain.
Fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) are lattice generalizations of the fractional quantum Hall effect that have been studied theoretically since the early 2010's. They were first predicted to exist in topological flat bands carrying Chern numbers. They can appear in topologically non-trivial band structures even in the absence of the large magnetic fields needed for the fractional quantum Hall effect. They promise physical realizations at lower magnetic fields, higher temperatures, and with shorter characteristic length scales compared to their continuum counterparts. FCIs were initially studied by adding electron-electron interactions to a fractionally filled Chern insulator, in one-body models where the Chern band is quasi-flat, at zero magnetic field. The FCIs exhibit a fractional quantized Hall conductance.
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