Exceptional electronic transport and quantum oscillations in thin bismuth crystals grown inside van der Waals materials

Laisi Chen; Amy X Wu; Naol Tulu; Joshua Wang; Adrian Juanson; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Michael T Pettes; Marshall A Campbell; Mingjie Xu; Chaitanya A Gadre; Yinong Zhou; Hangman Chen; Penghui Cao; Luis A Jauregui; Ruqian Wu; Xiaoqing Pan; Javier D Sanchez-Yamagishi

doi:10.1038/s41563-024-01894-0

Exceptional electronic transport and quantum oscillations in thin bismuth crystals grown inside van der Waals materials

Nat Mater. 2024 May 13. doi: 10.1038/s41563-024-01894-0. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Laisi Chen^#¹, Amy X Wu^#¹, Naol Tulu¹, Joshua Wang¹, Adrian Juanson², Kenji Watanabe³, Takashi Taniguchi⁴, Michael T Pettes⁵, Marshall A Campbell^{1

5}, Mingjie Xu⁶, Chaitanya A Gadre¹, Yinong Zhou¹, Hangman Chen⁷, Penghui Cao⁷, Luis A Jauregui¹, Ruqian Wu¹, Xiaoqing Pan^{1

6

8}, Javier D Sanchez-Yamagishi⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA.
³ Research Center for Electronic and Optical Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan.
⁴ Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan.
⁵ Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Materials Physics and Applications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.
⁶ Irvine Materials Research Institute, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. javier.sanchezyamagishi@uci.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 38740956
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01894-0

Abstract

Confining materials to two-dimensional forms changes the behaviour of the electrons and enables the creation of new devices. However, most materials are challenging to produce as uniform, thin crystals. Here we present a synthesis approach where thin crystals are grown in a nanoscale mould defined by atomically flat van der Waals (vdW) materials. By heating and compressing bismuth in a vdW mould made of hexagonal boron nitride, we grow ultraflat bismuth crystals less than 10 nm thick. Due to quantum confinement, the bismuth bulk states are gapped, isolating intrinsic Rashba surface states for transport studies. The vdW-moulded bismuth shows exceptional electronic transport, enabling the observation of Shubnikov-de Haas quantum oscillations originating from the (111) surface state Landau levels. By measuring the gate-dependent magnetoresistance, we observe multi-carrier quantum oscillations and Landau level splitting, with features originating from both the top and bottom surfaces. Our vdW mould growth technique establishes a platform for electronic studies and control of bismuth's Rashba surface states and topological boundary modes^1-3. Beyond bismuth, the vdW-moulding approach provides a low-cost way to synthesize ultrathin crystals and directly integrate them into a vdW heterostructure.

Abstract

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