Quasicrystalline 30{\deg} Twisted Bilayer Graphene as an Incommensurate Superlattice with Strong Interlayer Coupling

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the successful growth and electronic characterization of quasicrystalline 30° twisted bilayer graphene, revealing strong interlayer coupling and novel electronic features in an incommensurate superlattice.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental realization of quasicrystalline twisted bilayer graphene with detailed electronic structure analysis, highlighting the role of interlayer coupling in incommensurate superlattices.

Findings

Confirmation of 30° twisted bilayer graphene via diffraction and Raman spectroscopy.

Observation of mirrored Dirac cones and a gap indicating strong interlayer coupling.

Evidence of generalized Umklapp scattering mechanism in incommensurate superlattice.

Abstract

The interlayer coupling can be used to engineer the electronic structure of van der Waals heterostructures (superlattices) to obtain properties that are not possible in a single material. So far research in heterostructures has been focused on commensurate superlattices with a long-ranged Moir\'e period. Incommensurate heterostructures with rotational symmetry but not translational symmetry (in analogy to quasicrystals) are not only rare in nature, but also the interlayer interaction has often been assumed to be negligible due to the lack of phase coherence. Here we report the successful growth of quasicrystalline 30{\deg} twisted bilayer graphene (30{\deg}-tBLG) which is stabilized by the Pt(111) substrate, and reveal its electronic structure. The 30{\deg}-tBLG is confirmed by low energy electron diffraction and the intervalley double-resonance Raman mode at 1383 cm$^{-1}$. Moreover, the emergence of mirrored Dirac cones inside the Brillouin zone of each graphene layer and a gap opening at the zone boundary suggest that these two graphene layers are coupled via a generalized Umklapp scattering mechanism, i.e. scattering of Dirac cone in one graphene layer by the reciprocal lattice vector of the other graphene layer. Our work highlights the important role of interlayer coupling in incommensurate quasicrystalline superlattices, thereby extending band structure engineering to incommensurate superstructures.