Single Sublayer Reconstruction in Substrate-Supported WS<sub>2</sub> Twisted Bilayers.

Hsu, Hung-Chang; Lee, Yi-Han; Chen, Hao-Yu; Schnedler, Michael; Li, Ming-Yang; Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal E; Radu, Iuliana P; Ebert, Philipp et al. · ACS Nano · 2025

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Marginally twisted WS<sub>2</sub> bilayers undergo lattice reconstructions, but it is unclear if the distortion is equally distributed or confined to specific sublayers. Here, we use <i>in situ</i> combined noncontact atomic force microscopy with scanning tunneling spectroscopy to tune the probing depth to extract electronic and atomic lattice information for each sublayer separately. We find a lattice reconstruction unexpectedly confined to the WS<sub>2</sub> layer in contact with graphite only, governed by transition metal dichalcogenide-substrate interactions, leading to a peculiar type of a ferroelectric domain wall.