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Electrons can form an ordered solid crystal phase ascribed to the interplay between Coulomb repulsion and kinetic energy [1, 2]. Tuning these energy scales can drive a phase transition from electron solid to liquid, i.e. quantum melting of a Wigner crystal [3–6]. Two-dimensional moiré superlattices have become a fertile platform to observe generalized Wigner crystals [7, 8], which have so far been studied by optical [9–11] and scanning-probe-based methods [12–16] in p-type transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Using transport measurements to investigate Wigner states is vital to a complete characterization, however, it still poses a significant challenge due to problems in making reliable electrical contacts, particularly difficult for n-type materials like MoSe2. Here, we report the electrical transport observation of generalized Wigner crystal states at ν = 2/5, 1/2, 3/5, and 2/3 electron fillings of a moiré unit cell in twisted bilayer MoSe2. We find that these states are spin-polarized and that with the application of an out-of-plane magnetic field, additional states emerge at 8/9, 10/9, and 4/3 fillings. We further observe that these generalized Wigner crystal states can undergo continuous quantum melting transitions to liquid phases, manifested by a quantum critical scaling behaviors. The Mott state at ν = 1 exhibits different transition behaviors, which is associated with Pomeranchuk effect. Our findings establish twisted bilayer MoSe2 as a novel system to study strongly correlated states of matter and their quantum phase transitions.

Rights:

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
  

Keyword: quantum melting, Wigner crystal
, twisted bilayer MoSe2

Date published: 2025-04-30

Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Journal:

• Nature Communications (ISSN: 20411723) vol. 16 p. 4058-4058 4058

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Manuscript type: Publisher's version (Version of record)

MDR DOI:

First published URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59365-2

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Updated at: 2026-05-18 09:50:24 +0900

Published on MDR: 2026-05-18 12:23:11 +0900