English

Field-induced insulating states in a graphene superlattice

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2019-02-05 v1

Abstract

We report on high-field magnetotransport (B up to 35 T) on a gated superlattice based on single-layer graphene aligned on top of hexagonal boron nitride. The large-period moir\'e modulation (15 nm) enables us to access the Hofstadter spectrum in the vicinity of and above one flux quantum per superlattice unit cell (Phi/Phi_0 = 1 at B = 22 T). We thereby reveal, in addition to the spin-valley antiferromagnet at nu = 0, two insulating states developing in positive and negative effective magnetic fields from the main nu = 1 and nu = -2 quantum Hall states respectively. We investigate the field dependence of the energy gaps associated with these insulating states, which we quantify from the temperature-activated peak resistance. Referring to a simple model of local Landau quantization of third generation Dirac fermions arising at Phi/Phi_0 = 1, we describe the different microscopic origins of the insulating states and experimentally determine the energy-momentum dispersion of the emergent gapped Dirac quasi-particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.01298,
  title  = {Field-induced insulating states in a graphene superlattice},
  author = {S. Pezzini and S. Wiedmann and A. Mishchenko and M. Holwill and R. Gorbachev and D. Ghazaryan and K. S. Novoselov and U. Zeitler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.01298},
  year   = {2019}
}