ePrints

Macroscopic self-reorientation of interacting two-dimensional crystals

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Aleksey KozikovORCiD

Downloads

• Published version [.pdf]

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

Microelectromechanical systems, which can be moved or rotated with nanometre precision, already find applications in such fields as radio-frequency electronics, micro-attenuators, sensors and many others. Especially interesting are those which allow fine control over the motion on the atomic scale because of self-alignment mechanisms and forces acting on the atomic level. Such machines can produce well-controlled movements as a reaction to small changes of the external parameters. Here we demonstrate that, for the system of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride, the interplay between the van der Waals and elastic energies results in graphene mechanically self-rotating towards the hexagonal boron nitride crystallographic directions. Such rotation is macroscopic (for graphene flakes of tens of micrometres the tangential movement can be on hundreds of nanometres) and can be used for reproducible manufacturing of aligned van der Waals heterostructures.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Woods CR, Withers F, Zhu MJ, Cao Y, Yu G, Kozikov A, Ben Shalom M, Morozov SV, van Wijk MM, Fasolino A, Katsnelson MI, Watanabe K, Taniguchi T, Geim AK, Mishchenko A, Novoselov KS

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Nature Communications

Year: 2016

Volume: 7

Online publication date: 10/03/2016

Acceptance date: 20/01/2016

Date deposited: 02/07/2020

ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10800

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10800

Altmetrics

Share