Issue 5, 2023

Ferroelectric valley valves with graphene/MoTe2 van der Waals heterostructures

Abstract

Ferroelectric van der Waals heterostructures provide a natural platform to design a variety of electrically controllable devices. In this work, we demonstrate that AB bilayer graphene encapsulated in MoTe2 acts as a valley valve that displays a switchable built-in topological gap, leading to ferroelectrically driven topological channels. Using a combination of ab initio calculations and low energy models, we show that the ferroelectric order of MoTe2 allows the control of the gap opening in bilayer graphene and leads to topological channels between different ferroelectric domains. Moreover, we analyze the effect that the moiré modulation between MoTe2 and graphene layers has in the topological modes, demonstrating that the edge states are robust against moiré modulations of the ferroelectrically-induced electric potential. Our results put forward ferroelectric/graphene heterostructures as versatile platforms to engineer switchable built-in topological channels without requiring an external electric bias.

Graphical abstract: Ferroelectric valley valves with graphene/MoTe2 van der Waals heterostructures

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 9月 2022
Accepted
30 12月 2022
First published
31 12月 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 2181-2187

Ferroelectric valley valves with graphene/MoTe2 van der Waals heterostructures

A. O. Fumega and J. L. Lado, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 2181 DOI: 10.1039/D2NR05185K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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