About

Professor David Goldhaber-Gordon is the TG Wijaya Professor of Physics at Stanford University, specializing in condensed matter physics. His research primarily focuses on the experimental investigation of condensed matter phenomena in low-dimensional materials. His lab explores a wide range of materials and physical systems, utilizing nanofabrication techniques and experimental equipment to study exotic phenomena such as the Kondo effect and the 0.7 structure in quantum dots and quantum point contacts within two-dimensional electron gases. The lab employs scanning gate microscopes to examine electron transport in graphene, networks of carbon nanotubes, bilayer 2DEGs, and edge states in mercury telluride, a topological insulator. Goldhaber-Gordon's team was among the first to locally gate graphene and investigate transport through p-n junctions, extending this work to graphene nanoribbons and large-area CVD-grown graphene. His research also encompasses the physics of one-dimensional systems like peapod carbon nanotubes and cleaved-edge overgrowth hole wires, as well as electrolytically gated systems with ultrahigh charge density. In addition to experimental work, his lab engages in nanoscience and quantum engineering, fabricating nanoscale devices from novel materials and developing techniques to manipulate quantum properties, such as top-gating graphene, synthesizing new types of carbon nanotubes, and patterning graphene nanoribbons. His contributions include advancing the understanding of quantum systems and developing models to engineer the quantum properties of nanoribbons, 2D electron gases, and spins in quantum dots.

Selected publications

• Directional ballistic magnetotransport in the delafossite metals PdCoO$_2$ and PtCoO$_2$

  ArXiv.org · 2025-03-27

  preprintOpen access

  Studies of electronic transport in width-restricted channels of PdCoO$_2$ have recently revealed a novel `directional ballistic' regime, in which ballistic propagation of electrons on an anisotropic Fermi surface breaks the symmetries of bulk transport. Here we introduce a magnetic field to this regime, in channels of PdCoO$_2$ and PtCoO$_2$ along two crystallographically distinct directions and over a wide range of widths. We observe magnetoresistance distinct from that in the bulk, with features strongly dependent on channel orientation and becoming more pronounced the narrower the channel. Comparison to semi-classical theory establishes that magnetoresistance arises from field-induced modification of boundary scattering, and helps connect features in the data with specific electronic trajectories. However, the role of bulk scattering in our measurements is yet to be fully understood. Our results demonstrate that finite-size magnetotransport is sensitive to the anisotropy of Fermi surface properties, motivating future work to fully understand and exploit this sensitivity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Extended Fractional Chern Insulators Near Half Flux in Twisted Bilayer Graphene Above the Magic Angle

  ArXiv.org · 2025-03-17

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) -- the lattice analog of fractional quantum Hall states -- form as fractionalized quasiparticles emerge in a partially-filled Chern band. This fractionalization is driven by the interplay of electronic interaction and quantum geometry of the underlying wavefunctions. Bilayer graphene with an interlayer twist near the magic angle of 1.1\textdegree\ hosts diverse correlated electronic states at zero magnetic field. When the twist angle exceeds 1.3\textdegree, the electronic bandwidth is sufficient to suppress the zero-field correlated states. Yet applying a magnetic field can restore the importance of electron-electron interactions. Here, we report strongly-correlated phases when a 1.37\textdegree\ twisted bilayer graphene sample is tuned to near half a magnetic flux quantum per moiré cell, deep into the Hofstadter regime. Most notably, well-quantized odd-denominator FCI states appear in multiple Hofstadter subbands over unusually large ranges of density. We also observe a bending and resetting of the Landau minifan reminiscent of behavior commonly seen in magic-angle samples near integer filling at low magnetic field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A unified realization of electrical quantities from the quantum International System of Units

  Nature Electronics · 2025-08-12 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Topological bands and correlated states in helical trilayer graphene

  Nature Physics · 2025-01-07 · 17 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Automated tabletop exfoliation and identification of monolayer graphene flakes

  Review of Scientific Instruments · 2025-05-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Over the past two decades, graphene has been intensively studied because of its remarkable mechanical, optical, and electronic properties. Initial studies were enabled by manual "Scotch Tape" exfoliation; nearly two decades later, this method is still widely used to obtain chemically pristine flakes of graphene and other 2D van der Waals materials. Unfortunately, the yield of large, pristine flakes with uniform thickness is inconsistent. Thus, significant time and effort are required to exfoliate and locate flakes suitable for fabricating multilayer van der Waals heterostructures. Here, we describe a relatively affordable tabletop device (the "eXfoliator") that can reproducibly control key parameters and largely automate the exfoliation process. In a typical exfoliation run, the eXfoliator produces 3 or more large (≥400μm2) high-quality graphene monolayer flakes, allowing new users to produce such flakes at a rate comparable to manual exfoliation by an experienced user. We use an automated mapping system and a computer vision algorithm to locate candidate flakes. Our results provide a starting point for future research efforts to identify more precisely which parameters matter for the success of exfoliation and to optimize them.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Superconducting Dome in Ionic Liquid Gated Homoepitaxial Strontium Titanate Thin Films

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2025-09-19

  preprintOpen access

  In this work, we patterned a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) on the surface of a SrTiO$_3$ thin film grown homoepitaxially on SrTiO$_3$ by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy (hMBE). We explored the superconducting dome in this material system by tuning electron density with ionic liquid gating. We found superconducting transitions up to 503 mK near an optimal electron density of approximately 3 $\times$ 10$^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$. This is a meaningful increase from the typical optimal transition near 350 mK in similar 2DEGs on SrTiO$_3$ single crystal substrate surfaces. Systematic tuning of 2DEG electron density revealed a consistent BCS scaling between superconducting critical temperature, coherence length, and electron mean free path. Substantial variation of transition width across the dome was described by a paraconductivity model combining Aslamazov-Larkin and Maki-Thompson contributions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quantitative determination of twist angle and strain in Van der Waals moiré superlattices

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-06-12

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Scanning probe techniques are popular, non-destructive ways to visualize the real space structure of Van der Waals moirés. The high lateral spatial resolution provided by these techniques enables extracting the moiré lattice vectors from a scanning probe image. We have found that the extracted values, while precise, are not necessarily accurate. Scan-to-scan variations in the behavior of the piezos which drive the scanning probe, and thermally-driven slow relative drift between probe and sample, produce systematic errors in the extraction of lattice vectors. In this Letter, we identify the errors and provide a protocol to correct for them. Applying this protocol to an ensemble of ten successive scans of near-magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, we are able to reduce our errors in extracting lattice vectors to less than 1%. This translates to extracting twist angles with a statistical uncertainty less than 0.001° and uniaxial heterostrain with uncertainty on the order of 0.002%.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Automated Tabletop Exfoliation and Identification of Monolayer Graphene Flakes

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-03-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Over the past two decades, graphene has been intensively studied because of its remarkable mechanical, optical, and electronic properties. Initial studies were enabled by manual ``Scotch Tape'' exfoliation; nearly two decades later, this method is still widely used to obtain chemically-pristine flakes of graphene and other 2D van der Waals materials. Unfortunately, the yield of large, pristine flakes with uniform thickness is inconsistent. Thus, significant time and effort are required to exfoliate and locate flakes suitable for fabricating multilayer van der Waals heterostructures. Here, we describe a relatively affordable tabletop device (the ``eXfoliator'') that can reproducibly control key parameters and largely automate the exfoliation process. In a typical exfoliation run, the eXfoliator produces 3 or more large ($\ge400\ μ$m$^2$) high-quality graphene monolayer flakes, allowing new users to produce such flakes at a rate comparable to manual exfoliation by an experienced user. We use an automated mapping system and a computer vision algorithm to locate candidate flakes. Our results provide a starting point for future research efforts to more precisely identify which parameters matter for the success of exfoliation, and to optimize them.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Deterministic fabrication of graphene hexagonal boron nitride moiré superlattices

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-09-27 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The electronic properties of moiré heterostructures depend sensitively on the relative orientation between layers of the stack. For example, near-magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) commonly shows superconductivity, yet a TBG sample with one of the graphene layers rotationally aligned to a hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) cladding layer provided experimental observation of orbital ferromagnetism. To create samples with aligned graphene/hBN, researchers often align edges of exfoliated flakes that appear straight in optical micrographs. However, graphene or hBN can cleave along either zig-zag or armchair lattice directions, introducing a [Formula: see text] ambiguity in the relative orientation of two flakes. By characterizing the crystal lattice orientation of exfoliated flakes prior to stacking using Raman and second-harmonic generation for graphene and hBN, respectively, we unambiguously align monolayer graphene to hBN at a near-[Formula: see text], not [Formula: see text], relative twist angle. We confirm this alignment by torsional force microscopy of the graphene/hBN moiré on an open-face stack, and then by cryogenic transport measurements, after full encapsulation with a second, nonaligned hBN layer. This work demonstrates a key step toward systematically exploring the effects of the relative twist angle between dissimilar materials within moiré heterostructures.

  PublisherDOI

• Chemically Tailored Growth of 2D Semiconductors via Hybrid Metal–Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition

  ACS Nano · 2024-09-04 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are an exciting platform for excitonic physics and next-generation electronics, creating a strong demand to understand their growth, doping, and heterostructures. Despite significant progress in solid-source (SS-) and metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), further optimization is necessary to grow highly crystalline 2D TMDCs with controlled doping. Here, we report a hybrid MOCVD growth method that combines liquid-phase metal precursor deposition and vapor-phase organo-chalcogen delivery to leverage the advantages of both MOCVD and SS-CVD. Using our hybrid approach, we demonstrate WS2 growth with tunable morphologies─from separated single-crystal domains to continuous monolayer films─on a variety of substrates, including sapphire, SiO2, and Au. These WS2 films exhibit narrow neutral exciton photoluminescence line widths down to 27–28 meV and room-temperature mobility up to 34–36 cm2 V–1 s–1. Through simple modifications to the liquid precursor composition, we demonstrate the growth of V-doped WS2, MoxW1–xS2 alloys, and in-plane WS2–MoS2 heterostructures. This work presents an efficient approach for addressing a variety of TMDC synthesis needs on a laboratory scale.

  PublisherDOI