Scanning SQUID microscopy on van der Waals devices with in situ uniaxial strain*

Van der Waals (vdW) materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, are atomically-thin, crystalline materials that exhibit a rich variety of electronic phenomena. Application of uniaxial strain can be a powerful tool to alter the properties of materials by breaking symmetry and modulating electronic structure. Scanning superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) microcopy probes local magnetization, electronic transport and magnetic response, which can give insights into the electronic phenomena observed in vdW materials. In this talk, we  report on  local magnetic measurements using a scanning SQUID on uniaxially strained vdW samples. We fabricate vdW devices on a polyimide substrate, and use a commercial piezoelectric strain cell to apply in-situ tunable strain to the device. We present the design of our straining platform and discuss  measurements on few layer NbSe2 samples, where we locally observe changes in the superconducting transition temperature as a function of strain. Our approach is compatible with a wide variety of vdW heterostructures.