PhD scholarship in Moiré and Patterned 2D Materials for Bandgap Engineering - DTU Physics

If you want to design the electronic properties of a material rather than simply measure them, this PhD puts the tools in your hands.

When two-dimensional crystals are stacked with a controlled twist, or when a periodic pattern is imprinted into them, an artificial superlattice emerges in which the band structure can be reshaped and bandgaps opened by design, using a novel combination of 2D materials and freestanding oxide membranes.

You will create such materials yourself in a group that has worked with 2D materials for two decades and with full access to the cleanroom and microscopy infrastructure at DTU Nanolab. The project is part of METRIQS and is carried out together with national and international partners.

Responsibilities and qualifications Your overall focus will be to create and control superlattices in graphene and other 2D materials, and to establish how the engineered structure translates into an engineered electronic band structure.

You will pursue two complementary routes: assembling hybrid van der Waals heterostructures in which the moiré periodicity is set by twist angle and lattice mismatch and imprinting periodic patterns directly into the 2D material or its supporting layers by nanofabrication. Both routes call for careful design, reproducible processing and close comparison between intended and realised structure1 …