Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter MatSE Colloquium - "Straintronics: Mechanically enabled functionality in 2D Materials"

Recently, strain has emerged as a powerful approach to control material and device properties on an unprecedented scale. As the ultimate limit of both an electronic thin-film and a mechanical atomic membrane, two dimensional materials like graphene and MoS₂ are ideal systems for tuning properties via strain: they host rich quantum behaviour, while the lower dimensionality enables new kinds of symmetry changing deformations. However, in many next generation technologies utilizing 2D materials, including beyond silicon electronics, wearables, and neuromorphic or quantum computational paradigms, strain is typically an unknown or uncontrolled parameter. In this talk, I will discuss how my group is unravelling the nanoscale interfacial mechanics in 2D materials, and their influence on the electronic properties and device transport. I will demonstrate how combining interfacial slip with patterned stressors or nanoscale wrinkling creates a mechanically programmable platform where material properties can be spatially written. We are leveraging these capabilities to realize technologies such as high current density 2D transistors, stretchable electronics, or enhanced sensitivity in biosensors. Finally, this work indicates new frontiers where patterned strains may be used to access new electronic phases, including patterned pseudomagnetic fields and Kagome superlattices, or how strain gradients may be used to direct energy and information at the nanoscale by engineering material topology or funnel carriers.