Materials one atom thick have not yet gone beyond scientific laboratories, but their prospects are very bright. Inspired by the triumph of graphene, physicists began to invent other two-dimensional structures that could find very unexpected applications.
The 2D material makes the electronic device even more miniaturized. This is its advantage - and not the only one - over ordinary, voluminous bodies. An ultrathin layer of matter acquires new optical, mechanical and electronic properties.
Imagine an empty bookcase. Obviously, the books can only be put on the shelves. In this case, they are the energy values that become available to electrons if the size of the body is reduced to minimum values, for example, to the diameter of an atom. This is how the principle of dimensional quantization manifests itself.
The graphene sandwich turns …
Of the two-dimensional materials created to date, only graphene has any commercial prospects. Moreover, scientists propose not to limit the scope of this material to electronics. How about graphene body armor? At first glance, the idea is strange - after all, this is a soft material, in fact, graphite, from which pencil leads are made. But two layers of graphene, stacked together, will show absolutely amazing properties: extraordinary hardness when pressure is applied to them, and flexibility after weakening the impact. This was recently shown by scientists from the United States and Europe. To form a two-layer graphene, they created a pressure from one to 10 gigapascals with a diamond rod, which is comparable to the fall of a hundred-hundred-ton slab per square meter of surface.
But structures of three, four and five graphene layers did not show such properties. It turned out that the unusual strength of the new material is due to a change in the "shape" of electron orbitals, which is impossible in other configurations of layers.
Promotional video:
Flat bulb and flexible display
“Thinner, more flexible, brighter” is the motto of modern display manufacturers, which means they may well be interested in 2D materials. But how do you make them glow brightly? This was succeeded by specialists at the University of Vienna, who developed a light source made of molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) with a thickness of one atom.
Molecular structure drawing of molybdenum disulfide / Depositphotos / ogwen.
Physicists attached metal electrodes to a monolayer of this substance and suspended the entire structure in a vacuum. By passing an electric current through it, they forced the molybdenum sulfide to heat up and emit light. True, only a part of the film shone, the length of which did not exceed 150 nanometers. But dashing trouble has begun! The authors of the study promise to grow two-dimensional molybdenum sulfide more authentic, test a new type of light emitter on it, and then it may be possible to integrate it into microcircuits from which flexible and bright displays one atom thick will be produced someday.