Proceedings of nanoGe September Meeting 2017 (NFM17)
Publication date: 20th June 2016
Cyclotron motion of charge carriers in metals and semiconductors leads to Landau quantization and magneto-oscillatory behavior in their properties, such as Shubnikov-de Haas oscilations and quantum Hall effect. Cryogenic temperatures are usually required to observe phenomena. We show that superlattices formed in graphene on hexagonal boron nitride substrate support a different type of quantum oscillations that do not rely on Landau quantization. The period of oscilations is directly related to the lattice parameter of the superlattice. The oscillations are extremely robust and persist well above room temperature in magnetic fields of only a few T. We attribute this phenomenon to repetitive changes in the electronic structure of superlattices such that charge carriers experience effectively no magnetic field at simple fractions of the flux quantum per superlattice unit cell. Our work points at unexplored physics in Hofstadter butterfly systems at high temperatures.