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Imaging Bulk and Edge Transport near the Dirac Point in Graphene Moiré Superlattices.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Morikawa, Sei 
Cresti, Alessandro 
Wang, Shu-Wei 
Smith, Charles G 

Abstract

Van der Waals structures formed by aligning monolayer graphene with insulating layers of hexagonal boron nitride exhibit a moiré superlattice that is expected to break sublattice symmetry. Despite an energy gap of several tens of millielectronvolts opening in the Dirac spectrum, electrical resistivity remains lower than expected at low temperature and varies between devices. While subgap states are likely to play a role in this behavior, their precise nature is unclear. We present a scanning gate microscopy study of moiré superlattice devices with comparable activation energy but with different charge disorder levels. In the device with higher charge impurity (∼1010 cm-2) and lower resistivity (∼10 kΩ) at the Dirac point we observe current flow along the graphene edges. Combined with simulations, our measurements suggest that enhanced edge doping is responsible for this effect. In addition, a device with low charge impurity (∼109 cm-2) and higher resistivity (∼100 kΩ) shows subgap states in the bulk, consistent with the absence of shunting by edge currents.

Description

Keywords

Graphene moiré superlattice, gapped Dirac Fermion system, scanning gate microscopy, topological edge states, valley Hall effects

Journal Title

Nano Lett

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1530-6984
1530-6992

Volume Title

18

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L020963/1)
This work was partly supported by EPSRC EP/L020963/1, JST CREST Grant Numbers JPMJCR15F3 and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP25107003, JP25107004, JP26248061, JP15H01010, JP16H00982.