The discovery of superconductivity and correlated electronic states in the flat bands of twisted bilayer graphene has raised a lot of excitement. Flat bands also occur in multilayer graphene flakes that present rhombohedral (ABC) stacking order on many consecutive layers. Although Bernal-stacked (AB) graphene is more stable, long-range ABC-ordered flakes involving up to 50 layers have been surprisingly observed in natural samples. Here we present a microscopic atomistic model, based on first-principles density functional theory calculations, that demonstrates how shear stress can produce long-range ABC order. A stress-angle phase diagram shows under which conditions ABC-stacked graphene can be obtained, providing an experimental guide for its synthesis.
@article{arxiv.2002.07790,
title = {Long-range rhombohedral-stacked graphene through shear},
author = {Jean Paul Nery and Matteo Calandra and Francesco Mauri},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.07790},
year = {2020}
}