Exploring the potential of bidimensional materials for energy and optoelectronics

This symposium targets to showcase recent groundbreaking results in the field of functional bidimensional/layered materials, covering key aspects of their production, of the fundamental understanding of their optical and electronic properties and of their application in energy-related and optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, photodetectors, light emitting diodes, energy conversion and storage systems.

Scope:

Flat nanomaterials are extremely fascinating platforms to exploit for energy conversion/storage as well as optoelectronic applications, with the enormous potential to build “bottom-up” nanotechnological items of relevance for a number of human needs, ranging from medicine to sustainability. Such species are wellknown as bidimensional materials and change in atomic constituents bring about a wide range of properties, particularly optical, electronic, thermal and mechanical, but also large surface areas that can be conveniently exposed to favor interfacial processes. They derive from 3D crystals with intrinsically layered structures kept together by van der Waals interactions, such as graphite (providing graphene) or molybdenum/tungsten sulphides, selenides and oxides, to cite some of the most popular, which can be ideally “exfoliated” layer after layer up to providing one atom-thick individual nanosheets. Also, the more recently explored field of 2D perovskites, obtained from the classical 3D ABX3 perovskite structure after complete or partial substitution of the A-cation with large organic cations, can be included in this category. Their physicochemical properties can be further modulated by doping or functionalization: solubility profiles can be altered to favor dispersion in a desired medium, electrical and electronic properties can be tuned, hybridization with other nanomaterials can be promoted, to cite a few major cases of general utility. Pairing these systems can not only lead to new nano-assemblies that are highly light/electro/catalytically-active with exceptional mobility, but also enable control over bandlike to charge-hopping transport.

The symposium will span material preparation and structural characterization, theoretical modeling, structure-property-function relationships and device fabrication. The ultimate goal is to maintain high the attention towards the fascinating world of layered nanomaterials. With this symposium, we also aim at bringing together different protagonists of the current research scenario devoted to the better understanding and exploitation of the properties of bidimensional materials, in order to identify common grounds and to exchange valuable ideas for the further development of the field.

Hot topics to be covered:

• 2D Materials synthesis via bottom-up and top-down methods
• 2D perovskites and their photophysical properties
• 2D covalent organic framework
• Emerging bidimensional materials and exotic physico-chemical properties
• Nanographenes and related nanosystems
• Heterostructures based on bidimensional materials
• Incorporation of bidimensional materials into thin films and complex solid-state architectures
• Bidimensional materials-based optoelectronic devices
• Bidimensional materials in (photo)electrocatalysis
• Bidimensional materials in energy storage