Phys.org April 17, 2023
Interfaces of van der Waals (vdW) materials, such as graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), exhibit low friction sliding due to their atomically flat surfaces and weak vdW bonding. An international team of researchers (UC Irvine, Japan) has demonstrated that microfabricated gold also slides with low friction on hBN. This enables the arbitrary post-fabrication repositioning of device features both at ambient conditions and in situ to a measurement cryostat. They demonstrated mechanically reconfigurable vdW devices where device geometry and position are continuously tunable parameters. By fabricating slidable top gates on a graphene-hBN device, they produced a mechanically tunable quantum point contact where electron confinement and edge-state coupling could be continuously modified. They combined in situ sliding with simultaneous electronic measurements to create new types of scanning probe experiments. Their finding could fundamentally change the nature of electronic devices, as well as the way scientists research atomic-scale quantum materials… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
AFM friction measurements for gold squares sliding on hBN. Credit: SCIENCE ADVANCES, 7 Apr 2023, Vol 9, Issue 14