Funding
EMP is funded through the Horizon2020 programme of the European Commission.
Selected Publications

Out-of-plane corrugations in graphene based van der Waals heterostructures

Simon Zihlmann, Péter Makk, Mirko K. Rehmann, Lujun Wang, Máté Kedves, David Indolese, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Dominik M. Zumbühl, Christian Schönenberger

Two dimensional materials are usually envisioned as flat, truly 2D layers. However out-of-plane corrugations are inevitably present in these materials. In this manuscript, we show that graphene flakes encapsulated between insulating crystals (hBN, WSe2), although having large mobilities, surprisingly contain out-of-plane corrugations. The height fluctuations of these corrugations are revealed using weak localization measurements in the presence of a static in-plane magnetic field. Due to the random out-of-plane corrugations, the in-plane magnetic field results in a random out-of-plane component to the local graphene plane, which leads to a substantial decrease of the phase coherence time. Atomic force microscope measurements also confirm a long range height modulation present in these crystals. Our results suggest that phase coherent transport experiments relying on purely in-plane magnetic fields in van der Waals heterostructures have to be taken with serious care.


Phys. Rev. B 102, 195404 (2020)

doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.102.195404

arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.02690