No Arabic abstract
Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is the supporting substrate of choice for two-dimensional material devices because it is atomically flat and chemically inert. However, due to the small size of mechanically exfoliated hBN flakes, electronic structure studies of 2D materials supported by hBN using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) are challenging. Here we investigate the electronic band structure of a Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene sheet on a hexagonal boron nitride (BLG/hBN) flake using nanospot ARPES (nanoARPES). By fitting high-resolution energy vs. momentum electronic band spectra, we extract the tight-binding parameters for BLG on hBN. In addition, we reveal spatial variations of the alignment angle between BLG and hBN lattices via inhomogeneity of the electronic bands near the Fermi level. We confirmed these findings by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements obtained on the same device. Our results from spatially resolved nanoARPES measurements of BLG/hBN heterostructures are instrumental for understanding experiments that utilize spatially averaging techniques such as electronic transport and optical spectroscopy.
The effect of an hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) layer close aligned with twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) is studied. At sufficiently low angles between twisted bilayer graphene and hBN, $theta_{hBN} lesssim 2^circ$, the graphene electronic structure is strongly disturbed. The width of the low energy peak in the density of states changes from $W sim 5 - 10$ meV for a decoupled system to $sim 20 - 30$ meV. Spikes in the density of states due to van Hove singularities are smoothed out. We find that for a realistic combination of the twist angle in the TBG and the twist angle between the hBN and the graphene layer the system can be described using a single moire unit cell.
Graphene has demonstrated great promise for future electronics technology as well as fundamental physics applications because of its linear energy-momentum dispersion relations which cross at the Dirac point. However, accessing the physics of the low density region at the Dirac point has been difficult because of the presence of disorder which leaves the graphene with local microscopic electron and hole puddles, resulting in a finite density of carriers even at the charge neutrality point. Efforts have been made to reduce the disorder by suspending graphene, leading to fabrication challenges and delicate devices which make local spectroscopic measurements difficult. Recently, it has been shown that placing graphene on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) yields improved device performance. In this letter, we use scanning tunneling microscopy to show that graphene conforms to hBN, as evidenced by the presence of Moire patterns in the topographic images. However, contrary to recent predictions, this conformation does not lead to a sizable band gap due to the misalignment of the lattices. Moreover, local spectroscopy measurements demonstrate that the electron-hole charge fluctuations are reduced by two orders of magnitude as compared to those on silicon oxide. This leads to charge fluctuations which are as small as in suspended graphene, opening up Dirac point physics to more diverse experiments than are possible on freestanding devices.
The most important bands for the evaluation of strain in graphene (the 2D and 2D prime modes) are investigated. It is shown that for Bernal-stacked bilayers, the two-phonon Raman features have three different components that can be assigned to processes originating solely from the top graphene layer, bottom graphene layer, and from a combination of processes originating both from the top and bottom layers. The individual components of the 2D and 2D prime modes are disentangled. The reported results enable addressing the properties of individual graphene layers in isotopically labelled turbostratic and Bernalstacked graphene systems.
We study the stability and electronic structure of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene on the hexagonal boron nitride (TBG/BN). Full relaxation has been performed for commensurate supercells of the heterostructures with different twist angles ($theta$) and stackings between TBG and BN. We find that the slightly misaligned configuration with $theta = 0.54^circ$ and the AA/AA stacking has the globally lowest total energy due to the constructive interference of the moir{e} interlayer potentials and thus the greatly enhanced relaxation in its $1 times 1$ commensurate supercell. Gaps are opened at the Fermi level ($E_F$) for small supercells with the stackings that enable strong breaking of the $C_2$ symmetry in the atomic structure of TBG. For large supercells with $theta$ close to those of the $1 times 1$ supercells, the broadened flat bands can still be resolved from the spectral functions. The $theta = 0.54^circ$ is also identified as a critical angle for the evolution of the electronic structure with $theta$, at which the energy range of the mini-bands around $E_F$ begins to become narrower with increasing $theta$ and their gaps from the dispersive bands become wider. The discovered stablest TBG/BN with a finite $theta$ of about $0.54^circ$ and its gapped flat bands agree with recent experimental observations.
High pressure Raman experiments on Boron Nitride multi-walled nanotubes show that the intensity of the vibrational mode at ~ 1367 cm-1 vanishes at ~ 12 GPa and it does not recover under decompression. In comparison, the high pressure Raman experiments on hexagonal Boron Nitride show a clear signature of a phase transition from hexagonal to wurtzite at ~ 13 GPa which is reversible on decompression. These results are contrasted with the pressure behavior of carbon nanotubes and graphite.