Moiré Materials

Atomically thin van der Waals crystals can be stacked atop one another to create synthetic materials with entirely new properties. In the emerging field known as moiré materials, a twist angle and/or lattice mismatch between van der Waals layers results in a periodic modulation of the atomic stacking – a moiré pattern – that strongly modifies the electronic, magnetic, optical, and phononic properties of the heterostructure. Since just over a decade ago, this field has been evolving at a rapid pace following the initial discoveries of moiré patterns and band structure modification in twisted graphene and graphene aligned with hexagonal boron nitride. The recent discovery of strong correlations and superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene greatly accelerated this growth. The field of moiré materials has since expanded to include a wide variety of materials beyond graphene such as transition metal dichalcogenides and two-dimensional magnets, demonstrating the power of moiré engineering to induce and control novel properties in van der Waals heterostructures.

This special topic in APL Materials is devoted to recent advances in moiré materials, including novel materials, techniques to create twist angle controlled heterostructures, and efforts to probe their electronic, magnetic, optical and phononic properties.