Flat conduction and valence bands for interlayer excitons in moiré type-II transition-metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers*

We analyze the flatness of conduction and valence bands of interlayer excitons in MoS₂/WSe₂ van der Waals heterobilayers, tuned by interlayer twist angle [1], pressure [2,3], and external electric field [4].  We employ an efficient continuum model where the moiré pattern from lattice mismatch and/or twisting is represented by an equivalent mesoscopic periodic potential. We demonstrate that the mismatch moiré potential is too weak to produce significant flattening.  Moreover, we draw attention to the fact that the quasiparticle effective masses around the Γ-point and the band flattening are reduced with twisting. As an alternative approach, we show (i) that reducing the interlayer distance by uniform vertical pressure can significantly increase the effective mass of the moiré hole, and (ii) that the moiré depth and its band flattening effects are strongly enhanced by accessible electric gating fields perpendicular to the heterobilayer, with resulting electron and hole effective masses increased by more than an order of magnitude leading to ultra-flat bands. These findings impose boundaries on the commonly generalized benefits of moiré twistronics, while also revealing alternate feasible routes to achieve truly flat electron and hole bands to carry us to strongly-correlated excitonic phenomena on demand.

[1] C. Zhang, et al., Sci. Adv. 3, e1601459 (2017)

[2] X. Ma, et al., Nano Lett. 21 8035 (2021)

[3] J. Xia, et al., Nat. Phys. 17, 92 (2021)

[4] H. C. Kamban and T. G. Pedersen, Sci. Rep. 10, 5537 (2020)