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Interfacial ferroelectricity emerges in heterostructures consisting of nonpolar van der Waals (vdW) layers, greatly expanding the scope of two dimensional ferroelectrics. In particular, the unconventional moire ferroelectricity observed in bilayer graphene/boron nitride (BN) heterostructures, exhibits promising functionalities with topological current, superconductivity and synaptic responses. However, the debate about its mechanism - correlation driven charge transfer between two graphene layers - limits device reproducibility and hence large-scale production. Here by designing a single-layer graphene encapsulated by lattice-mismatched WSe2, we identify the ferroelectricity as stemming from - instead of graphene moire bands - the particular BN, where interfacial sliding ferroelectricity must play a role. With similar structures, multilayer twisted MoS2 is found to reproduce the ferroelectricity. The key is a conductive moire ferroelectric, where the screened gate and the pinned domain wall together result in unchanged electronic states, i.e. anomalous screening. The intimate connection to interfacial sliding ferroelectricity thus provides advantages of diverse choices of constituent materials and robust polarization switching while preserving the unique anomalous screening, paving the way to reproducible and reliable memory-based devices in artificial intelligence.

Semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) exhibit high mobility, strong spin-orbit coupling, and large effective masses, which simultaneously leads to a rich wealth of Landau quantizations and inherently strong electronic interactions. However, in spite of their extensively explored Landau levels (LL) structure, probing electron correlations in the fractionally filled LL regime has not been possible due to the difficulty of reaching the quantum limit. Here, we report evidence for fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states at filling fractions 4/5 and 2/5 in the lowest LL of bilayer MoS$_{2}$, manifested in fractionally quantized transverse conductance plateaus accompanied by longitudinal resistance minima. We further show that the observed FQH states sensitively depend on the dielectric and gate screening of the Coulomb interactions. Our findings establish a new FQH experimental platform which are a scarce resource: an intrinsic semiconducting high mobility electron gas, whose electronic interactions in the FQH regime are in principle tunable by Coulomb-screening engineering, and as such, could be the missing link between atomically thin graphene and semiconducting quantum wells., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Realizing a large-scale fully controllable quantum system is a challenging task in current physical research and has broad applications. Ultracold atom and molecule arrays in optical tweezers in vacuum have been used for quantum simulation, quantum metrology and quantum computing. Recently, quantum ground state cooling of the center-of-mass motion of a single optically levitated nanoparticle in vacuum was demonstrated, providing unprecedented opportunities for studying macroscopic quantum mechanics and precision measurements. In this work, we create a reconfigurable optically-levitated nanoparticle array in vacuum. Our optically-levitated nanoparticle array allows full control of individual nanoparticles to form an arbitrary pattern and detect their motion. As a concrete example, we choose two nanoparticles without rotation signals from an array to synthesize a nanodumbbell in-situ by merging them into one trap. The nanodumbbell synthesized in-situ can rotate beyond 1 GHz. Our work provides a new platform for studying macroscopic many-body physics., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

In this work, we study the synergistic correlated states in two distinct types of interacting electronic systems coupled by interlayer Coulomb interactions. We propose that this scenario can be realized in a type of Coulomb-coupled graphene-insulator heterostructures with gate tunable band alignment. We find that, by virtue of the interlayer Coulomb coupling between the interacting electrons in the two layers, electronic states that cannot be revealed in either individual layer would emerge in a cooperative and synergistic manner. Specifically, as a result of the band alignment, charge carriers can be transferred between graphene and the substrate under the control of gate voltages, which can yield a long-wavelength electronic crystal at the surface of the substrate. This electronic crystal exerts a superlattice Coulomb potential on the Dirac electrons in graphene, which generates subbands with reduced non-interacting Fermi velocity. As a result, $e$-$e$ Coulomb interactions within graphene would play a more important role, giving rise to a gapped Dirac state at the charge neutrality point, accompanied by interaction-enhanced Fermi velocity. Moreover, the superlattice potential can give rise to topologically nontrivial subband structures which are tunable by superlattice's constant and anisotropy. Reciprocally, the electronic crystal formed in the substrate can be substantially stabilized in such coupled bilayer heterostructure by virtue of the cooperative interlayer Coulomb coupling. We further perform high-throughput first principles calculations to identify a number of promising insulating materials as candidate substrates for graphene to demonstrate these effects., Comment: Main text: 14 pages with 5 figures and 1 table; Supplement info: 30 pages with 13 figures and 5 tables

Ferroelecticity, one of the keys to realize nonvolatile memories owing to the remanent electric polarization, has been an emerging phenomenon in the two-dimensional (2D) limit. Yet the demonstrations of van der Waals (vdW) memories using 2D ferroelectric materials as an ingredient are very limited. Especially, gate-tunable ferroelectric vdW memristive device, which holds promises in future neuromorphic applications, remains challenging. Here, we show a prototype gate-programmable memory by vertically assembling graphite, CuInP2S6, and MoS2 layers into a metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor architecture. The resulted devices exhibit two-terminal switchable electro-resistance with on-off ratios exceeding 105 and long-term retention, akin to a conventional memristor but strongly coupled to the ferroelectric characteristics of the CuInP2S6 layer. By controlling the top gate, Fermi level of MoS2 can be set inside (outside) of its band gap to quench (enable) the memristive behaviour, yielding a three-terminal gate programmable nonvolatile vdW memory. Our findings pave the way for the engineering of ferroelectric-mediated memories in future implementations of nanoelectronics.

For two decades, two-dimensional carbon species, including graphene, have been the core of research in pursuing next-generation logic applications beyond the silicon technology. Yet the opening of a gap in a controllable range of doping, whilst keeping high conductance outside of this gapped state, has remained a grand challenge in them thus far. Here we show that, by bringing Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene in contact with an anti-ferromagnetic insulator CrOCl, a strong insulating behavior is observed in a wide range of positive total electron doping $n_\mathrm{tot}$ and effective displacement field $D_\mathrm{eff}$ at low temperatures. Transport measurements further prove that such an insulating phase can be well described by the picture of an inter-layer excitonic state in bilayer graphene owing to electron-hole interactions. The consequential over 1 $\mathrm{G\Omega}$ excitonic insulator can be readily killed by tuning $D_\mathrm{eff}$ and/or $n_\mathrm{tot}$, and the system recovers to a high mobility graphene with a sheet resistance of less than 100 $\mathrm{\Omega}$. It thus yields transistors with "ON-OFF" ratios reaching 10$^{7}$, and a CMOS-like graphene logic inverter is demonstrated. Our findings of the robust insulating phase in bilayer graphene may be a leap forward to fertilize the future carbon computing., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Quantum Hall effect (QHE), the ground to construct modern conceptual electronic systems with emerging physics, is often much influenced by the interplay between the host two-dimensional electron gases and the substrate, sometimes predicted to exhibit exotic topological states. Yet the understanding of the underlying physics and the controllable engineering of this paradigm of interaction remain challenging. Here we demonstrate the observation of an unusual QHE, which differs markedly from the known picture, in graphene samples in contact with an anti-ferromagnetic insulator CrOCl equipped with dual gates. Owing to the peculiar interfacial coupling, Landau levels in monolayer graphene remain intact at negative filling fractions, but largely deviated for the positive gate-doping range. The latter QHE phase even presents in the limit of zero magnetic field, with the consequential Landau quantization following a parabolic relation between the displacement field $D$ and the magnetic field $B$. This characteristic prevails up to 100 K in a sufficiently wide effective doping range from 0 to 10$^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$. Our findings thus open up new routes for manipulating the quantum electronic states, which may find applications in such as quantum metrology., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

The recent discovery of magnetic van der Waals materials has triggered a wealth of investigations in materials science, and now offers genuinely new prospects for both fundamental and applied research. Although the catalogue of van der Waals ferromagnets is rapidly expanding, most of them have a Curie temperature below 300 K, a notable disadvantage for potential applications. Combining element-selective x-ray magnetic imaging and magnetic force microscopy, we resolve at room temperature the magnetic domains and domains walls in micron-sized flakes of the CrTe$_2$ van der Waals ferromagnet. Flux-closure magnetic patterns suggesting in-plane six-fold symmetry are observed. Upon annealing the material above its Curie point (315 K), the magnetic domains disappear. By cooling back down the sample, a different magnetic domain distribution is obtained, indicating material stability and lack of magnetic memory upon thermal cycling. The domain walls presumably have N\'eel texture, are preferentially oriented along directions separated by 120 degrees, and have a width of several tens of nanometers. Besides microscopic mapping of magnetic domains and domain walls, the coercivity of the material is found to be of a few mT only, showing that the CrTe$_2$ compound is magnetically soft. The coercivity is found to increase as the volume of the material decreases.

Spin-related electronics using two dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials as a platform are believed to hold great promise for revolutionizing the next generation spintronics. Although many emerging new phenomena have been unravelled in 2D electronic systems with spin long-range orderings, the scarcely reported room temperature magnetic vdW material has thus far hindered the related applications. Here, we show that intrinsic ferromagnetically aligned spin polarization can hold up to 316 K in a metallic phase of 1$T$-CrTe$_{2}$ in the few-layer limit. This room temperature 2D long range spin interaction may be beneficial from an itinerant enhancement. Spin transport measurements indicate an in-plane room temperature negative anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) in few-layered CrTe$_{2}$, but a sign change in the AMR at lower temperature, with -0.6$\%$ at 300 K and +5$\%$ at 10 K, respectively. This behavior may originate from the specific spin polarized band structure of CrTe$_{2}$. Our findings provide insights into magnetism in few-layered CrTe$_{2}$, suggesting potential for future room temperature spintronic applications of such 2D vdW magnets., Comment: 9 Pages, 4 Figures

The ground state of charge neutral graphene under perpendicular magnetic field was predicted to be a quantum Hall topological insulator with a ferromagnetic order and spin-filtered, helical edge channels. In most experiments, however, an otherwise insulating state is observed and is accounted for by lattice-scale interactions that promote a broken-symmetry state with gapped bulk and edge excitations. We tuned the ground state of the graphene zeroth Landau level to the topological phase via a suitable screening of the Coulomb interaction with a SrTiO$_3$ high-$k$ dielectric substrate. We observed robust helical edge transport emerging at a magnetic field as low as 1 tesla and withstanding temperatures up to 110 kelvins over micron-long distances. This new and versatile graphene platform opens new avenues for spintronics and topological quantum computation., Comment: Main text + SI

In crystals, the duplication of atoms often follows different periodicity along different directions. It thus gives rise to the so called anisotropy, which is usually even more pronounced in two dimensional (2D) materials due to the absence of $\textbf{z}$ dimension. Indeed, in the emerging 2D materials, electrical anisotropy has been one of the focuses in recent experimental efforts. However, key understandings of the in-plane anisotropic resistance in low-symmetry 2D materials, as well as demonstrations of model devices taking advantage of it, have proven difficult. Here, we show that, in few-layered semiconducting GaTe, electrical conductivity along $\textbf{x}$ and $\textbf{y}$ directions of the 2D crystal can be gate tuned from a ratio of less than one order to as large as 10$^{3}$. This effect is further demonstrated to yield an anisotropic memory resistor behaviour in ultra-thin GaTe, when equipped with an architecture of van der Waals floating gate. Our findings of gate tunable giant anisotropic resistance (GAR) effect pave the way for potential applications in nano-electronics such as multifunctional directional memories in the 2D limit., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

Manipulating quantum state via electrostatic gating has been intriguing for many model systems in nanoelectronics. When it comes to the question of controlling the electron spins, more specifically, the magnetism of a system, tuning with electric field has been proven to be elusive. Recently, magnetic layered semiconductors have attracted much attention due to their emerging new physical phenomena. However, challenges still remain in the demonstration of a gate controllable magnetism based on them. Here, we show that, via ionic gating, strong field effect can be observed in few-layered semiconducting Cr$_{2}$Ge$_{2}$Te$_{6}$ devices. At different gate doping, micro-area Kerr measurements in the studied devices demonstrate tunable magnetization loops below the Curie temperature, which is tentatively attributed to the moment re-balance in the spin-polarized band structure. Our findings of electric-field controlled magnetism in van der Waals magnets pave the way for potential applications in new generation magnetic memory storage, sensors, and spintronics., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

Atomically-thin 2D semiconducting materials integrated into van der Waals heterostructures have enabled architectures that hold great promise for next generation nanoelectronics. However, challenges still remain to enable their full acceptance as compliant materials for integration in logic devices. Two key-components to master are the barriers at metal/semiconductor interfaces and the mobility of the semiconducting channel, which endow the building-blocks of ${pn}$ diode and field effect transistor. Here, we have devised a reverted stacking technique to intercalate a wrinkle-free h-BN tunnel layer between MoS$_{2}$ channel and contacting electrodes. Vertical tunnelling of electrons therefore makes it possible to suppress the Schottky barriers and Fermi level pinning, leading to homogeneous gate-control of the channel chemical potential across the bandgap edges. The observed unprecedented features of ambipolar ${pn}$ to ${np}$ diode, which can be reversibly gate tuned, paves the way for future logic applications and high performance switches based on atomically thin semiconducting channel., Comment: 23 pages, 5 main figures + 9 SI figures