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A research team led by Prof Ursula Wurstbauer from the Institute of Physics at the University of Münster has investigated how electrons in two-dimensional crystals can be collectively excited and controlled. The study is pioneering for understanding the electronic properties of crystal structures and specifically influencing them.
If you make a material thinner and thinner, at a certain point it undergoes a seemingly miraculous transformation: A two-dimensional material that consists of only one or two layers of molecules sometimes has completely different properties than the same material when it is thicker. A research team led by physicist Prof Ursula Wurstbauer from the University of Münster is investigating how the properties of two-dimensional crystals can be controlled so that they behave like an insulator, an electrical conductor, a superconductor or a ferromagnet, for example. To do this, the scientists utilised the interactions between the charge carriers (electrons) and the so-called energy landscape of the crystals. Now, for the first time, the team has generated and quantitatively demonstrated collective excitations of the charge carriers within different energy landscapes. The study, which has been published in the journal "Physical Review Letters", is pioneering for understanding the electronic characteristics of crystal structures and specifically influencing them.
To obtain the different properties, the scientists placed two layers of a two-dimensional crystal on top of each other and twisted them slightly against each other. This twisting creates geometric patterns, so-called moiré patterns - similar to two layers of thin curtain fabric laid on top of each other. These patterns characterise the energy landscape and force the electrons to move much more slowly. These changes result in the electrons interacting intensively with each other, which can lead to so-called strongly correlated behaviour.
“The electrons ‘feel and see’ each other, and it happens that a moiré lattice site in the neighbourhood of an electron cannot be occupied or can only be occupied with a high energy input due to repulsion according to Coulomb's law,” explains Ursula Wurstbauer. “The correlations are formed depending on the pattern and the number of electrons.” She uses the “wild” dancing in a disco as an illustration of the different behaviour of electrons compared to the orderly dance patterns of standard dancing. “The way in which the electrons ‘dance’ or can move in the moiré patterns depends strongly on the pattern, the number of charge carriers and the resulting energy landscape.”
The properties of these material systems are not only interesting in basic research, emphasises Ursula Wurstbauer. “They may offer innovative application possibilities in quantum technology or for the realisation of so-called neuromorphic components and circuits.”
The team, which included scientists from the University of Hamburg, RWTH Aachen University and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg as well as Ursula Wurstbauer's research group, prepared different two-dimensional crystals (graphene, molybdenum diselenide and tungsten diselenide) and analysed the samples using optical spectroscopy methods at cryogenic temperatures (“resonant inelastic light scattering spectroscopy”). The researchers combined the experimental work with theoretical analyses.
Financial support:
The German Research Foundation (DFG) supported the work financially as part of Priority Programme 2244.
Prof. Dr. Ursula Wurstbauer
Universität Münster
Telefon: +49 251 83-33609
Nihit Saigal et al. (2024): Collective charge excitations between moiré-minibands in twisted WSe2 bilayers from resonant inelastic light scattering. Physical Review Letters; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.046902
https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.PI/Wurstbauer/people/people.html AG Wurstbauer
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