Basic research on 1-atom-thick nanosheets shows many hypothetical uses

Oxford and Dublin boffins have unlocked a doorway leading to more than 150 super-thin exotic nanosheet materials just one atom thick.

The names sound like a chemist's molecular roll call: boron nitride (BN), molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), and bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3). None of these compounds are new - but single-atom-thick* crystals or flakes made of of these compounds would be. Freed from characteristics caused as a result of them being in instantiations multiple atoms thick, they can - among other things - become vastly better thermoelectric devices, generating electricity from heat.

The research was carried out by a team of boffins led by CRANN (Center for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices), Dublin's Trinity College and the University of Oxford. What this team has done, following the example set by Russian Nobel Prize-winning boffins last year with graphene, a similarly two-dimensional material - if you regard single-atom thickness as being equivalent to having no thickness dimension. Individual flakes of graphene have electronic and mechanical properties that are very different from its parent crystal material, graphite.

Read full article here