Project description
A slippery graphene sandwich may appease hunger for novel functionalities of 2D materials
Layered 2D materials such as graphene sheets and certain graphene-like transition metal compounds have been attracting a great amount of research interest for their unique optical and electronic properties. These properties become even more interesting when the 2D sheets are subjected to extreme deformations such as stretching. However, it is technically challenging to stretch them to extremes in a practical way without damaging them. STRAIN2EXTREME has developed a technique to sandwich these 2D materials between thin layers that are non-reactive and ‘non-sticky’, reinforcing their mechanical stability on a 'super-lubricant' substrate. Using this experimental setup, scientists plan to induce extreme local strains in a reliable and repeatable way, potentially opening a window on never-before-seen electronic and optical responses with revolutionary applications.
Objective
"Inherent stability of layered 2D materials supports a remarkably large strain along the plane of these 1-atom-thick crystals. For example, graphene and MoS2 can stretch, in principle, by 20% - ten times more than the typical intrinsic breakdown strain of 3D crystals. Such extreme deformations of the interatomic distance can drive exciting structural phase transitions, support fascinating electronic orders, and pro-foundly impact the electronic or optical response.
Individually, however, pulling these ultimately thin materials to reliably approach their intrinsic limit poses great challenge. Cracks, defects, and out-of-plane motion all motivate early rupture, that prevented ap-plicable demonstration of extreme strains so far.
STRAIN2EXTREME, instead, relies on recent advances in Van-der-Waals (VdW) structures; Sandwiched between thin impermeable layers the mechanical stability is reinforced, while suppressing unwanted chemistry and contamination at these ""all-surface"" materials. Notably, the minute amount of defects, dangling bonds, and disorder, do not pin-down the strain to relax locally to the rigid substrate as in com-mon interfaces. It results in a nearly frictionless sliding between the weakly interacting layers.
Based on this finding, I set forward an entirely new approach to pull the structures while supporting them on a “super-lubricant” substrate. This support allows us to gradually narrow the shape into sub-micrometre constrictions, and ""focus"" a moderate pulling force to induce extreme local strains reliably. Moreover, we directly control the gradient of the strain in space by the precise shape. Remarkably, fixed strain gradients, can induce uniform “pseudo-vector-potentials” of extreme strength.
Using the unique mechanics and outstanding lubricity of VdW structure, I intend to realize highly ballistic time-reversal-protected transport, demonstrate a new ""pseudo-Hall"" effect, and explore crystal-induced electromagnetic fields in moire' super-lattices."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
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ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2019-STG
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69978 Tel Aviv
Israel
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