The properties of heterogeneous materials are often dominated by the details that occur at the interface, that is, at the boundary where the materials change. In this sense, surface physics is also the physics of interfaces between a material and, typically, air or vacuum. The importance of interface properties is highly dependent on dimension, so they are much more important in nanometric materials. The extreme case is that of two-dimensional materials. They have thicknesses of up to a single atom, so all the material is surface. Thus, when two of these materials are brought into contact, the interaction between them plays a determining role in their physical properties. Two-dimensional materials can be obtained from laminar materials, the structure of which is due to the weak van der Waals-type interaction between the layers. Thanks to this weak interaction, it has been possible to obtain isolated layers.
The wide variety of sheet materials that exist naturally as minerals offer a range of physical properties ranging from metals to semiconductors with gaps across the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, when stacking, you can think of endless possibilities to achieve properties tailored to the required needs. In sum, the investigation of the physics of two-dimensional materials invites a wide variety of challenges and the realization of the promise of manipulating matter layer by layer. At IFUNAM, novel 2D materials such as graphene and dichalcogenides, among others, are studied from the theoretical and experimental points of view.
