Priority Programme “2D Materials – Physics of van der Waals [hetero]structures (2DMP)” (SPP 2244)
Deadline: 28. Juni 2023
In 2019, the Senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) established the Priority Programme “2D Materials – Physics of van der Waals [hetero]structures (2DMP)” (SPP 2244). The programme is designed to run for six years. The present call invites proposals for the second three-year funding period.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are crystals with a thickness of only one or very few atoms. After the discovery of graphene, the most prominent representative of this class of materials, many other 2D crystals have been identified, often with intriguing properties that have no counterparts in three-dimensional solids.
Furthermore, stacking 2D crystals in a well-defined manner can result in new states of matter, even if the individual layers are only weakly bound by van der Waals (vdW) interaction. The most striking example, published in 2018, is the transformation of bilayer graphene into a superconductor if the layers are twisted by a “magic angle” of about 1.1 degrees. Such a delicate structure manipulation has become possible thanks to the massive efforts invested in researching graphene-related materials. It opens the door to the investigation of phase transitions imposed by the so-called proximity effect, for example between Mott insulator and unconventional superconducting state, to a 2D ferromagnetic phase, or semiconductor-metal transitions. In addition, vdW heterostructures offer rich optical and optoelectronic properties, such as interlayer excitons and trions. The combination of 2D crystals with different properties, e.g. a 2D superconductor and a 2D topological insulator, may enable exotic physical phenomena such as Majorana fermions. The goal of the Priority Programme is to bundle the research efforts and expertise in the German scientific community to address the many open fundamental questions of stacked 2D materials.
All proposals shall address the exploration of 2DMP’s fundamental research goal: to explore and to deeply understand the physical phenomena in 2D vdW materials that are emerging from interlayer interactions, Moiré superstructures and/or proximity effects. Each project shall advance at least one of the following three research areas:
- electronic properties and transport (including moiré physics, effects of interlayer interactions on the electronic properties, charge and spin transport as well as strain and doping effects)
- optical and optoelectronic effects (including spin-valley-physics, exciton and trion physics, optical properties emerging from interlayer interactions in 2D vdW materials)
- collective and correlated phenomena (including spin, magnetic and superconducting proximity effects, Mott insulators) and novel topological states emerging in 2D vdW [hetero]structures
