Moir\'e physics plays an important role for the characterization of functional materials and the engineering of physical properties in general, ranging from strain-driven transport phenomena to superconductivity. Here, we report the observation of moir\'e fringes in conductive atomic force microscopy (cAFM) scans gained on the model ferroelectric Er(Mn,Ti)O3. By performing a systematic study of the impact of key experimental parameters on the emergent moir\'e fringes, such as scan angle and pixel density, we demonstrate that the observed fringes arise due to a superposition of the applied raster scanning and sample-intrinsic properties, classifying the measured modulation in conductance as a scanning moir\'e effect. Our findings are important for the investigation of local transport phenomena in moir\'e engineered materials by cAFM, providing a general guideline for distinguishing extrinsic from intrinsic moir\'e effects. Furthermore, the experiments provide a possible pathway for enhancing the sensitivity, pushing the resolution limit of local transport measurements by probing conductance variations at the spatial resolution limit via more long-ranged moir\'e patterns.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2302.01671,
title = {Moir\'e Fringes in Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy},
author = {L. Richarz and J. He and U. Ludacka and E. Bourret and Z. Yan and A. T. J. van Helvoort and D. Meier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.01671},
year = {2023}
}