Band Structure Engineering of Moire van der Waals Heterostructures with High Pressure

This project aims to use mechanical deformations (e.g., high pressure) to control the electronic properties of moire van der Waals materials. One major goal of the project is to develop new experimental techniques for achieving such mechanical control, in particular the ability to apply very large pressures using diamond anvil cells. In parallel, the project aims to identify and understand the most exciting moire materials to control via these mechanical deformations. These structures are assembled from graphene and boron nitride building blocks, which are stacked upon one another with an interlayer twist angle in order to create a moire pattern. These moire materials can exhibit emergent strongly correlated and topological states of matter for specific combinations of the constituent crystals and specific twist angles between them. The properties of the moire pattern driving these interesting states can be tuned by applying mechanical deformations such as pressure to the structure.