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Residue-Free Fabrication of van der Waals Heterostructures of Two-Dimensional Materials
Published on: July 18, 2025
Tuning Band Gap and Work Function Modulations in Monolayer hBN/Cu(111) Heterostructures with Moiré Patterns
Qiang Zhang1,2,3, Jin Yu4,5, Philipp Ebert6
1International Center for Quantum Design of Functional Materials (ICQD), Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei , Anhui 230026 , China.
Abstract:
The moiré pattern formed between a two-dimensional (2D) material and the substrate has played a crucial role in tuning the electronic structure of the 2D material. Here, by using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, we found a moiré-pattern-dependent band gap and work function modulation in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN)/Cu(111) heterostructures, whose amplitudes increase with the moiré pattern wavelength. Moreover, the work function modulation shifts agree well with the conduction band edge shifts, indicating a spatially constant electron affinity for the hBN layer. Density functional theory calculations showed that these observations in hBN/Cu(111) heterostructures mainly originated from the hybridization of the N 3p z orbital and Cu 4s orbital in different atomic configurations. Our results show that the twist-angle dependence of moiré patterns in hBN/Cu(111) heterostructures can be used to tailor the electronic properties including band gap and work function.
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