Moir\'e metrology of energy landscapes in van der Waals heterostructures

Understand

The emerging field of twistronics, which harnesses the twist angle between two-dimensional materials, represents a promising route for the design of quantum materials, as the twist-angle-induced superlattices offer means to control topology and strong correlations.

• At the small twist limit, and particularly under strain, as atomic relaxation prevails, the emergent moir\'e superlattice encodes elusive insights into the local interlayer interaction.
• Here we introduce moir\'e metrology as a combined experiment-theory framework to probe the stacking energy landscape of bilayer structures at the 0.1 meV/atom scale, outperforming the gold-standard of quantum chemistry.
• Through studying the shapes of moir\'e domains with numerous nano-imaging techniques, and correlating with multi-scale modelling, we assess and refine first-principle models for the interlayer interaction.