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Fragile nanosheets stripped from crystals

Two-dimensional materials have been restricted to systems in which strong chemical bonds hold atoms together in sheets. Now, 2D materials consisting of molecules linked by weak non-covalent bonds have been peeled from crystals.
  1. Claudia Backes

    1. Claudia Backes is in the Physical Chemistry of Nanomaterials group, Kassel University, 34132 Kassel, Germany.

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Much research is currently focused on the fabrication and characterization of two-dimensional nanomaterials, which are often produced by peeling ultrathin sheets of atoms from crystals. It is widely thought that this method requires the crystals to contain layers of atoms held together by strong covalent bonds, with only weak binding between the layers. Writing in Nature, Dong et al.1 show that this is not always the case. The authors demonstrate that 2D nanosheets with high aspect ratios (ratios of length to thickness) can be obtained from crystals, suspended in liquids, when the molecules in the layers are held together only by weak non-covalent bonds.

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Nature 602, 582-583 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00466-z

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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