Jedediah Pixley
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Physics
Stacking two atom-thin sheets of material with a small twist between them creates atomic patterns that do not occur in nature, and changing the number of electrons in such a device can turn it into a metal, an insulator, a semiconductor, or a superconductor. Real devices are never perfect: the twist angle wanders across a sample, atoms go missing, and the layers relax into irregular arrangements.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
condensed matter theory
2D materials
twisted bilayer graphene
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Determine how twist-angle disorder, the place-to-place variation in twist, alters electronic response in twisted bilayer graphene and twisted transition-metal dichalcogenide bilayers, using kernel polynomial calculations on large disordered models.
- Predict the scanning tunneling microscopy signature of vacancies in twisted bilayer graphene so that missing atoms can serve as an experimental probe of the device.
- Identify which symmetry-broken and strongly correlated states emerge on the quasiperiodic structures formed when twisted bilayer graphene relaxes near alignment with hexagonal boron nitride, using Hartree-Fock and dynamical mean-field theory.
- Test how Weyl Fermi-arc surface states can be manipulated by coupling them to classical spin ice, quantum spin ice, or a superlattice potential.
More about the research
This theory and computation project asks how such imperfections reshape electronic behavior, how they can be turned into measurement tools, and what new phases of matter appear when these tunable systems are placed in contact.
Why it matters
Twisted two-dimensional devices are candidates for future electronics and for atomic-scale measurement tools, but their behavior depends on the imperfections every real sample carries. Predicting those effects could help experimentalists interpret their data, suggest new ways to measure quantities currently out of reach, and point to quantum phases not yet observed. The open-source codes would be usable by other groups.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yusong Bai
Brown University, RI·Physics·Early-career
Establish correlated electronic states and electric-field-controlled metal-insulator transitions in heterostructures where ordered nanocrystal superlattices impose periodic potentials on atomically thin materials, using low-temperature electrical transport.
You Zhou
University of Maryland, MD·Physics·Early-career
Fabricate coupled bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductors and test how their atomic structure and stacking affect the stability of Wigner crystals, ordered patterns of electrons.
Suneel Kumar Kodambaka
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Materials Science
Test whether atoms landing on van der Waals surfaces such as hexagonal boron nitride move faster than on conventional 3D solids, using in situ variable-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy during film growth.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
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