Abstract
While moiré phenomena have been extensively studied in low-carrier-density systems such as semiconductors, their implications for metallic systems with large Fermi surfaces remain largely unexplored. Using GPU-accelerated large-scale ab-initio quantum transport simulations, we investigate spin transport in two distinct platforms: twisted bilayer MoTe2 (semiconductor) and NbX2 (X = S, Se; metals). In twisted MoTe2, the spin Hall conductivity (SHC) evolves from \(4\frac{e}{4\pi }\) at 5.09° to \(10\frac{e}{4\pi }\) at 1.89°. Remarkably, in heavily doped metallic regimes where isolated Chern bands are absent, we observe a universal amplification of the SHC arising from Fermi surface reconstruction under a long-wavelength potential, with the peak SHC tripling from \(6\frac{e}{4\pi }\) at 5.09° to \(17\frac{e}{4\pi }\) at 3.89°. For moiré metals like twisted NbX2, we identify a record SHC of −5200 (ℏ/e)S/cm, surpassing all known bulk materials.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Mark Gates, Natalie Beams, Ahmad Abdelfattah and Jack Dongarra for helpful discussions on large matrix diagonalization. N.M. acknowledges the financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Y.Z. was supported by Max Planck partner lab on quantum materials. N.M., N.P., and C.F. acknowledge financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat – Complexity, Topology and Dynamics in Quantum Matter (EXC 2147, project-id 390858490).
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Y.Z. initiated the project. N.M. developed the computational codes and performed the quantum transport calculations with assistance from C.X., T.B., N.P., and C.F. Y.Z. and N.M. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.
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Mao, N., Xu, C., Bao, T. et al. Universal giant spin Hall effect in moiré metal. npj Comput Mater (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-025-01887-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-025-01887-w
