Sliding Disassembly of van der Waals Heterostructures: Part 1

Weak van der Waals interlayer interactions result in low sliding friction, which has been used to make reconfigurable devices [1]. Here we suggest a new paradigm for assembling, disassembling, and reconfiguring van der Waals heterostructures. Using microstructured polymer stamps to controllably slide constituent layers, we demonstrate reversible, non-destructive manipulation of heterostructures in nearly arbitrary geometries. I will discuss the effects of sliding on the lattice structure of materials at the moving interface. Specifically, we manipulate an hBN/monolayer-graphene/hBN heterostructure to repeatedly expose and re-encapsulate the graphene, and demonstrate with Raman spectroscopy that sliding imparts minimal strain to the underlying layer. We further demonstrate how sliding disassembly can be utilized to reconfigure the dielectric environment of graphene, in this case by replacing the top BN with exfoliated WSe2. I will outline how this newfound ability to manipulate the dielectric environment of a single sample can be used to gain deeper understanding into correlated and topological phases in two-dimensional systems [2].

[1] Barabas et al., Sci. Adv. 9, eadf9558(2023)

[2] Domaretskiy et al., Nature 644, 646–651 (2025)