Designer three-dimensional electronic bands in asymmetric transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures

Abstract: Van der Waals materials enable the construction of atomically sharp interfaces between compounds with distinct crystal and electronic properties. This is dramatically exploited in moir\'e systems, where a lattice mismatch or twist between monolayers generates an emergent in-plane periodicity, giving rise to electronic properties absent in the constituent materials. In contrast, vertical superlattices-formed by stacking dissimilar van der Waals materials in the out-of-plane direction on the nanometer scale-remain largely unexplored, despite their potential to realize analogous emergent phenomena in three dimensions. Here, we employ angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory to investigate six-to-eight layer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterostructures. We find that even a single superlattice unit, i.e. a pair of stacked few-layer materials, exhibits emergent bands that closely resemble the hallmark three-dimensional electronic structure of many-layer TMDs, while simultaneously exhibiting an orbital- and momentum-dependent delocalization through the entire heterostructure due to its asymmetric architecture. We demonstrate how non-trivial band topology and unique TMD fermiologies are readily stabilized through these mechanisms, thus providing direct evidence for the novel electronic states possible through vertical superlattice engineering. These findings establish asymmetric heterostructures as platforms to invoke and control unprecedented combinations of the diverse quantum phases native to many-layer TMDs.