Just a few years ago, researchers discovered that changing the angle between two layers of graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, also changed the material's electronic and optical properties. They then learned that a "twist" of 1.1 degrees—dubbed the "magic" angle—could transform this metallic material into an insulator or a superconductor, a finding that ignited excitement about a possible pathway to new quantum technologies.
To study the physics underlying this phenomenon, "twistronics" researchers had to produce tens to hundreds of different configurations of the twisted graphene structures—a costly and labor-intensive process. But a team of researchers led by Yuan Cao, the leading discoverer of the magic angle in 2018 and now an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, has created a device that can twist a single structure in countless ways.
In a study published in Nature, the researchers demonstrated the world's first micromachine that can twist 2D materials at will.
The fingernail-sized, on-chip platform, called MEGA2D, uses microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to conduct voltage-controlled manipulation of 2D materials—which are only nanometers thick—with unprecedented flexibility and precision.
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