Electronic phase separation in multilayer rhombohedral graphite

Yanmeng Shi, Shuigang Xu, Yaping Yang, Sergey Slizovskiy, Sergey V. Morozov, Seok-Kyun Son, Servet Ozdemir, Ciaran Mullan, Julien Barrier, Jun Yin, Alexey I. Berdyugin, Benjamin A. Piot, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Vladimir I. Fal’ko, Kostya S. Novoselov, A. K. Geim and Artem Mishchenko ()
Additional contact information
Yanmeng Shi: University of Manchester
Shuigang Xu: University of Manchester
Yaping Yang: University of Manchester
Sergey Slizovskiy: University of Manchester
Sergey V. Morozov: Russian Academy of Sciences
Seok-Kyun Son: University of Manchester
Servet Ozdemir: University of Manchester
Ciaran Mullan: University of Manchester
Julien Barrier: University of Manchester
Jun Yin: University of Manchester
Alexey I. Berdyugin: University of Manchester
Benjamin A. Piot: Université Grenoble Alpes, Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses, UPS-INSA-EMFL-CNRS-LNCMI
Takashi Taniguchi: National Institute for Materials Science
Kenji Watanabe: National Institute for Materials Science
Vladimir I. Fal’ko: University of Manchester
Kostya S. Novoselov: University of Manchester
A. K. Geim: University of Manchester
Artem Mishchenko: University of Manchester

Nature, 2020, vol. 584, issue 7820, 210-214

Abstract: Abstract Of the two stable forms of graphite, hexagonal and rhombohedral, the former is more common and has been studied extensively. The latter is less stable, which has so far precluded its detailed investigation, despite many theoretical predictions about the abundance of exotic interaction-induced physics1–6. Advances in van der Waals heterostructure technology7 have now allowed us to make high-quality rhombohedral graphite films up to 50 graphene layers thick and study their transport properties. Here we show that the bulk electronic states in such rhombohedral graphite are gapped8 and, at low temperatures, electron transport is dominated by surface states. Because of their proposed topological nature, the surface states are of sufficiently high quality to observe the quantum Hall effect, whereby rhombohedral graphite exhibits phase transitions between a gapless semimetallic phase and a gapped quantum spin Hall phase with giant Berry curvature. We find that an energy gap can also be opened in the surface states by breaking their inversion symmetry by applying a perpendicular electric field. Moreover, in rhombohedral graphite thinner than four nanometres, a gap is present even without an external electric field. This spontaneous gap opening shows pronounced hysteresis and other signatures characteristic of electronic phase separation, which we attribute to emergence of strongly correlated electronic surface states.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2568-2

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