Massive Dirac Fermions and Hofstadter Butterfly in a van der Waals Heterostructure

van der Waals heterostructures constitute a new class of artificial materials formed by stacking atomically thin planar crystals. We demonstrated band structure engineering in a van der Waals heterostructure composed of a monolayer graphene flake coupled to a rotationally aligned hexagonal boron nit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yankowitz, M., LeRoy, Brian J., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Moon, P., Koshino, M., Hunt, Benjamin Matthew, Sanchez, Javier Daniel, Young, Andrea Franchini, Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo, Ashoori, Raymond
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85880
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9703-6525
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8217-8213
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-1673
Description
Summary:van der Waals heterostructures constitute a new class of artificial materials formed by stacking atomically thin planar crystals. We demonstrated band structure engineering in a van der Waals heterostructure composed of a monolayer graphene flake coupled to a rotationally aligned hexagonal boron nitride substrate. The spatially varying interlayer atomic registry results in both a local breaking of the carbon sublattice symmetry and a long-range moiré superlattice potential in the graphene. In our samples, this interplay between short- and long-wavelength effects resulted in a band structure described by isolated superlattice minibands and an unexpectedly large band gap at charge neutrality. This picture is confirmed by our observation of fractional quantum Hall states at ±5/3 filling and features associated with the Hofstadter butterfly at ultrahigh magnetic fields.