Material science research into 2D materials has accelerated since the discovery of graphene in 2004. Graphene is a 2D sheet of carbon atoms, arranged in a way that each carbon atom is bonded to three other carbon atoms.
Today, several 2D materials are being studied for various purposes, like MXenes for energy storage.
Most existing 2D materials exist in a layered structural form known as van der Waals (vdW) layered crystal structures. While these materials hold many interesting properties, scientists have long wanted to probe thin 2D metals.
Now, researchers from the Institute of Physics (IOP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new manufacturing technique for developing 2D metals.
This method, known as vdW squeezing, is a convenient and universal manufacturing technique that allows researchers to make the metal layer in the Angstrom thickness limit, i.e., the atomic scale.
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