Electric Field-Induced Many-Body Interactions in 2D Materials

Two-dimensional (2D) materials underpin many modern applications such as energy storage devices and foldable electronics. The assembly of such nanostructures is mainly governed by long-range van der Waals (vdW) interactions. It has been shown that the inherent many-body character of these interactions can lead to substantial changes in interaction ranges and scaling laws in nanomaterials [Ambrosetti et al., Science 351 (2016)].

On the other hand, several studies have shown that long-range interactions can be tailored by employing static electric fields [Karimpour et al., arXiv:2103.16410] and controlling the electrostatic properties of 2D materials like graphene [Santos and Kaxiras, Nano Lett. 13 (2013)], which can serve as a viable fabrication method for nanometer-scale 2D structures [Liang et al., Nano Lett. 9 (2009)]. 

Here, we present a practical method to study the effects of static electric fields on the dipolar many-body vdW interaction and show that also the field-induced effects strongly deviate from pairwise additivity. Taking into account both the field-induced and vdW contributions, we study the interlayer interaction energy, explore the exfoliation mechanism and present an estimation of the field strengths required for the field-driven fabrication of 2D nanostructures.