2D Materials of Tomorrow

2D materials have revolutionised materials science and nanoscience due to their multitude of exceptional physical and chemical properties which enabled ground-breaking applications in optoelectronics, energy, sensing, composites, etc. However, low-cost ways to achieve the superlative properties of individual nanosheets in macroscale samples are crucial to exploiting their full technological potential. 2D-PRINTABLE aims at using sustainable and low-cost liquid exfoliation methods to produce over 40 new 2D materials and to develop printing and liquid-deposition methods to fabricate nanosheet networks and heterostructures with unique properties to enable the production of advanced printed digital devices.

2D ENGINE targets new 2D materials phases that do not exist in Nature in bulk but that can be engineered by synthetic techniques in thin film form. The new 2D phases emerge from their 3D polar parent materials with the wurtzite structure and stabilize below a critical thickness (a few ML) as a result of surface energy minimization, adopting a planar non-polar hexagonal (h) BN-like structure.

In modern society, as the use of information technology is rapidly increasing, it is necessary to develop new non-volatile, faster, and energy-efficient electronics. Spintronic technologies open promising routes to achieve this. However, devices based on conventional materials are still too inefficient for applications in consumer electronics. Here, we propose to develop a new energy-efficient spintronic memory device platform based on emerging atomically-thin two-dimensional (2D) quantum materials for the next generation of memory technologies.