Van Der Waals Heterostructures with Spin-Orbit Coupling

Herein, recent work on van der Waals (vdW) systems in which at least one of the components has strong spin-orbit coupling is reviewed, focussing on a selection of vdW heterostructures to exemplify the type of interesting electronic properties that can arise in these systems. First a general effective model to describe the low energy electronic degrees of freedom in these systems is presented. The model is then applied to study the case of (vdW) systems formed by a graphene sheet and a topological insulator. The electronic transport properties of such systems are discussed and it is shown how they exhibit much stronger spin-dependent transport effects than isolated topological insulators. Then, vdW systems are considered in which the layer with strong spin-orbit coupling is a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) and graphene-TMD systems are briefly discussed. In the second part of the article, a case is discussed in which the vdW system includes a superconducting layer in addition to the layer with strong spin-orbit coupling. It is shown in detail how these systems can be designed to realize odd-frequency superconducting pair correlations. Finally, twisted graphene-NbSe2 bilayer systems are discussed as an example in which the strength of the proximity-induced superconducting pairing in the normal layer, and its Ising character, can be tuned via the relative twist angle between the two layers forming the heterostructure.