Strain tuning of 2D van der Waals heterostructures

Strain engineering is a powerful tool for controlling the electronic properties of condensed matter systems. Prior work has focused primarily on applying strain to a wide variety of bulk crystals in order to tune their electronic states, including those with strong correlations and/or non-trivial topology. However, so far comparatively little experimental effort has been focused on controlling the properties of two-dimensional van der Waals (vdW) materials and heterostructures with strain. Here, we develop new experimental techniques to integrate in situ strain tuning with low temperature, high magnetic field electrical transport measurements of arbitrary vdW heterostructure devices. We fabricate devices on a thin silicon wafer and affix them onto a three-piezostack strain apparatus. By applying a voltage to the piezostack, we can continuously exert either compressive or tensile strain to the vdW heterostructure resting on the silicon wafer. We will discuss ongoing efforts to utilize this new technique to dynamically control the electronic properties of various vdW heterostructures with strain.