Photophysics of Emerging Functional van der Waals Materials

Layered metal thio- and seleno-phosphates (collectively abbreviated as MTPs) are an emerging class of functional 2D materials. Possessing a general chemical formula M₂P₂X₆ (for a single metal, for e.g. FePS₃) or M₁M₂P₂X₆ (for two metal cations, X = S or Se, e.g., CuInP₂S₆), they exhibit a variety of properties at room temperature such as (anti)ferroelectricity, (anti)ferromagnetism, and a wide range of bandgaps from ~0.7 – 3.5 eV. Over the past few years these materials have come (back) into prominence and significant research efforts are underway to study the electronic, magnetic and optical properties of these materials and their heterostructures. In this talk we will introduce this new class of 2D materials, some of the interesting physics that have been discovered in these materials and recent and ongoing research at AFRL in terms of single crystal growth, exfoliation and characterization of the 2D MTPs and their heterostructures.