Twist and strain identification in moiré heterostructures
Abstract
The geometrical and electronic properties of moiré materials are highly sensitive to the twist and strain in the samples due to the moiré magnifying effect. Accurate identification of twist and strain in moiré materials is therefore essential. In this work, we establish a general framework to extract the twist and strain configurations from moiré images with either atomic or moiré scale resolution. With only moiré-wavelength information, we show that there is a continuous family of possible twist and strain configurations, each one accounting for different orientations of the moiré pattern. To estimate the most likely twist-strain configuration, we discuss additional constraints and methods involving the minimum elastic energy and the electronic spectra. The minimum elastic energy, in particular, reflects that shear configurations become much more favorable as the strain increases. As an example of the developed methodology, we discuss the formation and identification of strained triangular moiré patterns. Our framework provides a comprehensive approach to identify the twist and strain configurations in systems with moiré-scale resolution.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhan2026twist,
title = {{Twist and strain identification in moiré heterostructures}},
author = {Zhen Zhan and Federico Escudero and Dong Wang and Yiwen Liu and Ambikesh Gupta and Pierre A. Pantaleón and Francisco Guinea},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.09611},
eprint = {2609.09611},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09611},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Twist and strain identification in moiré heterostructures
AU - Zhen Zhan
AU - Federico Escudero
AU - Dong Wang
AU - Yiwen Liu
AU - Ambikesh Gupta
AU - Pierre A. Pantaleón
AU - Francisco Guinea
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.09611
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09611
AB - The geometrical and electronic properties of moiré materials are highly sensitive to the twist and strain in the samples due to the moiré magnifying effect. Accurate identification of twist and strain in moiré materials is therefore essential. In this work, we establish a general framework to extract the twist and strain configurations from moiré images with either atomic or moiré scale resolution. With only moiré-wavelength information, we show that there is a continuous family of possible twist and strain configurations, each one accounting for different orientations of the moiré pattern. To estimate the most likely twist-strain configuration, we discuss additional constraints and methods involving the minimum elastic energy and the electronic spectra. The minimum elastic energy, in particular, reflects that shear configurations become much more favorable as the strain increases. As an example of the developed methodology, we discuss the formation and identification of strained triangular moiré patterns. Our framework provides a comprehensive approach to identify the twist and strain configurations in systems with moiré-scale resolution.
ER -