Straintronics in two-dimensional membranes

Mechanical strain and deformation offer an unprecedented ability to tailor the symmetry and structure of 2D materials, enabling a host of quantum phenomena like electronic and ferroic phase transitions, exciton trapping, pseudomagnetic fields, and moire engineering. Here, we utilize atomic to micro scale imaging to unravel the breakdown of continuum mechanics and new scaling laws in the atomic limit, and their influence on the electronic properties of 2D materials. We will cover examples including: (1) Demonstrating designable strain through the use of thin film stressors, which can be used to spatially pattern the electronic structure of 2D materials or interfacial heterostrain tuning of the moire superlattice. (2) Imaging the nanoscale shape of bends in 2D multilayers, and heterostructures and discovering the scaling laws that define interlayer slip at van der Waals interfaces, enabling membranes orders of magnitude more deformable than conventional thin films, (3) Leveraging these insights to demonstrate the feasibility of strain and deformation engineering across a broad range of applications such as mobility enhancement in 2D transistors, stretchable electronics, biosensors, and reconfigurable nanoelectromechanical systems.