TY - JOUR
T1 - Electronic transport in a two-dimensional superlattice engineered via self-assembled nanostructures
AU - Zhang, Yingjie
AU - Kim, Youngseok
AU - Gilbert, Matthew J.
AU - Mason, Nadya
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank J.W. Lyding for valuable discussions. Y.Z. was supported by a Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with funding provided by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. N.M. acknowledge support from the NSF-MRSEC under Award Number DMR-1720633. Y.Z. acknowledge research support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ENG-1434147. M.J.G. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECCS-1351871. This work was carried out in part in the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory Central Facilities and in the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Nanoscience offers a unique opportunity to design modern materials from the bottom up via low-cost, solution processed assembly of nanoscale building blocks. These systems promise electronic band structure engineering using not only the nanoscale structural modulation, but also the mesoscale spatial patterning, although experimental realization of the latter has been challenging. Here, we design and fabricate a new type of artificial solid by stacking graphene on a self-assembled, nearly periodic array of nanospheres, and experimentally observe superlattice miniband effects. We find conductance dips at commensurate fillings of charge carriers per superlattice unit cell, which are key features of minibands that are induced by the quasi-periodic deformation of the graphene lattice. These dips become stronger when the lattice strain is larger. Using a tight-binding model, we simulate the effect of lattice deformation as a parameter affecting the inter-atomic hopping integral, and confirm the superlattice transport behavior. This 2D material-nanoparticle heterostructure enables facile band structure engineering via self-assembly, promising for large-area electronics and optoelectronics applications.
AB - Nanoscience offers a unique opportunity to design modern materials from the bottom up via low-cost, solution processed assembly of nanoscale building blocks. These systems promise electronic band structure engineering using not only the nanoscale structural modulation, but also the mesoscale spatial patterning, although experimental realization of the latter has been challenging. Here, we design and fabricate a new type of artificial solid by stacking graphene on a self-assembled, nearly periodic array of nanospheres, and experimentally observe superlattice miniband effects. We find conductance dips at commensurate fillings of charge carriers per superlattice unit cell, which are key features of minibands that are induced by the quasi-periodic deformation of the graphene lattice. These dips become stronger when the lattice strain is larger. Using a tight-binding model, we simulate the effect of lattice deformation as a parameter affecting the inter-atomic hopping integral, and confirm the superlattice transport behavior. This 2D material-nanoparticle heterostructure enables facile band structure engineering via self-assembly, promising for large-area electronics and optoelectronics applications.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41699-018-0076-0
DO - 10.1038/s41699-018-0076-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059441319
SN - 2397-7132
VL - 2
JO - npj 2D Materials and Applications
JF - npj 2D Materials and Applications
IS - 1
M1 - 31
ER -