Merons and antimerons

Merons and antimerons - 28/03/2023

Sliding and twisting of van der Waals layers can produce fascinating physical phenomena. In a recent publication we show that moiré polar domains in bilayer hBN give rise to a topologically non-trivial winding of the polarization field, forming networks of merons and antimerons.

Polar meron-antimeron networks in strained and twisted bilayers. D. Bennett, G. Chaudhary, R.J. Slager, E. Bousquet and Ph. Ghosez, Nature Communications 14, 1629 (2023).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37337-8