Chiral twisted van der Waals nanowires

Peter Sutter (), Shawn Wimer and Eli Sutter ()
Additional contact information
Peter Sutter: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Shawn Wimer: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Eli Sutter: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Nature, 2019, vol. 570, issue 7761, 354-357

Abstract: Abstract Van der Waals heterostructures with small misalignment between adjacent layers (‘interlayer twist’) are of interest because of electronic structure and correlation phenomena (such as superconductivity) that are determined by both the atomic lattice and long-range superlattice potentials arising in interlayer moiré patterns1–7. Previously, such twisted heterostructures have involved a single planar interface between layers isolated by exfoliation and micromechanically stacked in the desired relative orientation1,8–12. Here we demonstrate a class of materials—van der Waals nanowires of layered crystals—in which a tunable interlayer twist evolves naturally during synthesis. In vapour–liquid–solid growth, nanowires of germanium(ii) sulfide, an anisotropic layered semiconductor, crystallize with layering along the wire axis13 and have a strong propensity for forming axial screw dislocations. Nanometre-resolved electron diffraction shows that Eshelby twist, induced by a torque on the ends of a cylindrical solid due to the stress field of an axial dislocation14,15, causes a chiral structure in the van der Waals nanowires. The in-plane germanium sulfide crystal axes progressively rotate along the wire, and germanium sulfide layers in adjacent turns of the helix naturally form a moiré pattern because of their interlayer twist. The axial rotation and the twist are tunable by varying the nanowire thickness. Combined electron diffraction and cathodoluminescence spectroscopy show the correlation between the interlayer twist and locally excited light emission that is due to progressive changes in the lattice orientation and in the interlayer moiré registry along the nanowires. The findings demonstrate a step towards scalable fabrication of van der Waals structures with defined twist angles, in which interlayer moiré patterns are realized along a helical path on a nanowire instead of a planar interface.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1147-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:570:y:2019:i:7761:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1147-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1147-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().