Mechanically reconfigurable van der Waals devices via low-friction gold sliding

Andrew Z. Barabas; Ian Sequeira; Yuhui Yang; Aaron H. Barajas-Aguilar; Takashi Taniguchi; Kenji Watanabe; Javier D. Sanchez-Yamagishi

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adf9558

Article Mechanically reconfigurable van der Waals devices via low-friction gold sliding

Andrew Z. Barabas ; Ian Sequeira ; Yuhui Yang ; Aaron H. Barajas-Aguilar ; Takashi Taniguchi (National Institute for Materials Science) ; Kenji Watanabe (National Institute for Materials Science) ; Javier D. Sanchez-Yamagishi

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Andrew Z. Barabas, Ian Sequeira, Yuhui Yang, Aaron H. Barajas-Aguilar, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Javier D. Sanchez-Yamagishi. Mechanically reconfigurable van der Waals devices via low-friction gold sliding. Science Advances. 2023, 9 (14), eadf9558. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf9558

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Interfaces of van der Waals (vdW) materials such as graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) exhibit low-friction sliding due to their atomically-Jat surfaces and weak vdW bonding. We demonstrate that microfabricated gold also slides with low friction on hBN. This enables the arbitrary post-fabrication repositioning of device features both at ambient conditions as well as in-situ to a measurement cryostat. We demonstrate mechanically-reconfigurable vdW devices where device geometry and position are continuously-tunable parameters. By fabricating slidable top gates on a graphene-hBN device, we produce a mechanically-tunable quantum point contact where electron con?nement and edge-state coupling can be continuously modified. Moreover, we combine in-situ sliding with simultaneous electronic measurements to create new types of scanning probe experiments, where gate electrodes and even entire vdW heterostructures devices can be spatially scanned by sliding across a target.

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