Interfaces of van der Waals (vdW) materials, such as graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), exhibit low-friction sliding due to their atomically flat surfaces and weak vdW bonding. We developed techniques to make selectively sliding and gripping connections to van der Waals materials in order to electrically contact, apply large forces selective layers, and selectively slide layers of a van der Waals heterostructure.

We applied this to create scannable top gate devices, fully slidable heterostructures, reconfigurable

amp; tunable devices, highly heterostrainable devices, and devices which can be manipulated and measured simultaneously. Our approach opens a wide parameter space to control van der Waals devices beyond what was previously possible.