Two-Dimensional Semiconductors: Recent Progress and Future Perspectives

Graphene with sp2-honeycomb carbon lattice has drawn a large amount of attention due to their excellent properties and potential applications in the many fields. Similar to the structure of graphene, inorganic graphenes are the two-dimensional counterparts of inorganic materials, especially the typical layer-structured semiconductors, such as boron nitride (h-BN) and transition metal dichalcogenides (e.g. MoS2 and WS2), whose layers are bound by weak van der Walls force. Different from the semi-metal of graphene, inorganic graphenes are natural semiconductors with atomic thickness. With one of dimensions extremely reduced, inorganic graphenes exhibit some unique properties, such as transition from indirect to direct semiconductor, and hance have great potential applications in electronic, energy storage, sensor, catalysis and composites, which are donated both from the dimension-reduce effect and from the modified semiconducting. In this feature article, recent developments in synthesis, properties and applications of inorganic graphenes are discussed. The reported virtues and novelties of inorganic graphenes are highlighted and their current problems in developing process are clarified, as well as their challenges and perspective in the future.