Descripción del proyecto
Una nueva vuelta de tuerca a los nanomateriales bidimensionales en capas podría fomentar propiedades exóticas
El maravilloso mundo de los nanomateriales bidimensionales, quizá más conocido por el público gracias al grafeno, ofrece enormes posibilidades para efectos y dispositivos cuánticos novedosos. Los nuevos ensamblajes construidos capa a capa a partir de planos atómicos aislados de nanomateriales cristalinos bidimensionales han abierto la puerta a todo un campo de investigación que explora estas llamadas heteroestructuras de van der Waals. El proyecto QTWIST, financiado con fondos europeos, da una nueva vuelta de tuerca al paradigma de diseño de estos sólidos artificiales al emplear una rotación entre planos cristalinos adyacentes para controlar sus propiedades en la escala de longitud nanométrica. Se espera que estos nanomateriales «retorcidos» den lugar a nuevas propiedades superconductoras y magnéticas como consecuencia de la nanotexturación exótica.
Objetivo
Van der Waals heterostructures, assembled from 2D materials, offer unprecedented opportunities for the material design by layer-by-atomic-layer construction of artificial solids. The potential of this approach is enormous, as demonstrated by the hundreds of patents and thousands of research publications appearing annually in the field.
This proposal will explore a new avenue in design of quantum solid state systems by employing a mutual rotation between adjacent crystalline planes, “twist”, to pattern their properties on the nanometre length scale. This opportunity has emerged due to my recent pioneering work with twisted layers of transition metal chalcogenides and ground-breaking technological achievements in ultra-high vacuum fabrication instrumentation.
I will transform the emerging field of “twistronics” by the in-situ fine-tuning of moiré superstructure and making pioneering studies of novel quantum and strong correlation phenomena in 2D materials accessible for the first time. In particular, I will explore different regimes of lattice reconstruction in 2D semiconductors to engineer and study (1) quantum many-body states of electrons and (2) design confined quantum states defined by piezoelectric and pseudomagnetic nanotextures in semiconducting and charge density wave 2D materials. Moreover, we will create and study world-first twisted heterostructures with (3) superconducting and (4) superconducting and magnetic 2D materials, aiming to create strong periodic nanotextures of their electronic states.
The realisation of my ambitious research programme is only possible due to our unique world-first UHV-technology which will allow assembly of high-quality twisted van der Waals heterostructures, and which we will develop to enable new dynamic twist-angle studies and local magnetic flux measurements. The potential impact of this proposal is ground-breaking for both fundamental science and nanotechnology, opening up a new route for nanoengineering of solids.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
M13 9PL Manchester
Reino Unido