By twisting stacks of atomically thin crystals, scientists have created structures called moiré materials, which can host useful, exotic electronic states. But switching between these states on ultrashort timescales remains a big challenge. Now Xiaoyang Zhu at Columbia University and his colleagues have demonstrated a way to use laser pulses to quickly inject charge into moiré materials and adjust their electronic behavior [1]. In a companion study, the team has shown that this process can induce certain metal-to-insulator phase transitions that had not previously been observed [2]. The new method could help scientists build ultrafast quantum devices based on moiré materials.
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