Moiré Superstructures as Transmission Gears for Nanosurfers Directed Motion at van der Waals Interfaces
Directed motion of nanosurfers, guided by a tribological mechanism, is demonstrated for graphene flakes embedded within a twisted graphene interface. When the flake size matches the moiré dimensions, shear-induced superstructure dynamics can anchor the flakes and drive them along directions different than the shear direction. The flake motion can be controlled via the twist angle and the sliding direction. The resulting flake dynamics exhibits two types of stick–slip motion, one at the atomic level and the other on the moiré superstructure scale. This phenomenon can be harnessed to design nanomechanical systems for targeted delivery of molecular cargo.
Authors
- Oded Hod (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3790-8613)
- Xiang Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8229-2865)
- Michael Urbakh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3959-5414)
- Diana Berman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9320-9772)
- Penghua Ying (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5758-2369)
- Asfaker Rahman
Institutions
- University of North Texas (US)
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Exact Sciences (United States) (US)
- Peac Institute of Multiscale Sciences (CN)
- Xi'an Jiaotong University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
- Published
- 2026-06-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6c00647
- Primary Topic
- Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- University of Science and Technology of China