Researchers at the department of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis played a key theoretical role in a new Nature study that directly images the electrostatic potential landscape inside a moiré quantum material using a powerful new experimental technique known as the atomic single-electron transistor.
The experimental advance led by Prof. Shahal Ilani and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science provides an unprecedented real-space view of the nanoscale potential that governs how electrons move in stacked two-dimensional materials. These measurements revealed striking spatial variations and symmetries in the moiré potential that had previously only been inferred indirectly.
Interpreting these images required new theoretical insight. The WashU theory team, led by Prof. Shaffique Adam and including WashU PhD student Liangtao Peng and a former PhD student Mohammed M. Al Ezzi, developed a self-consistent theoretical framework that explains how competing microscopic mechanisms such as lattice relaxation and stacking-dependent electronic effects combine to produce the observed potential patterns. Their analysis shows how these effects naturally lead to the near six-fold symmetry seen experimentally and clarifies why the measured potential amplitude exceeds prior theoretical expectations.
The full article, “Imaging the sub-moiré potential using an atomic single-electron transistor,” was published in Nature (2026).
