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**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

**Atomically Thin 2D Metals Created, Promising Revolution in Electronics**

**Beijing, May 15, 2025** – After a decade-long pursuit, scientists have achieved a breakthrough in creating atomically thin, two-dimensional (2D) metal sheets, paving the way for potentially revolutionary advances in electronics and sensor technology. A team from the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (both in Beijing), and Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (Dongguan) has announced a relatively simple technique to produce 2D sheets of metals like bismuth, gallium, indium, tin, and lead. Their research was published in the prestigious Journal *Nature*.

For years, scientists have been motivated to produce the 2D metals. Like graphene, a 2D form of carbon, 2D metals are predicted to exhibit unique electronic properties due to “quantum confinement,” where electrons are restricted to move in only two dimensions. This confinement alters the behavior of electrons, leading to materials with characteristics not found in their three-dimensional counterparts. This means 2D metals may be used to create supersensitive sensors with applications in medicine or the military.

One of the most exciting possibilities lies in creating “topological insulators” from 2D bismuth and tin. These exotic materials conduct electricity only along their edges, potentially enabling the development of faster, more efficient computers.

The technique involves sandwiching metal powder between layers of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) and sapphire, then applying pressure and twisting. The resulting metal sheet is just a few atoms thick – thin enough for electrons to be confined to 2D. The team successfully created bismuth sheets only 6.3 angstroms thick (an angstrom is one ten-billionth of a meter, or 0.1 nanometer). The resulting sheets exhibit properties that indicate the electrons are confined to 2D.

Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi, a condensed-matter physics researcher at the University of California, Irvine, commented on the achievement, calling the new technique a “substantial improvement over what can be made using more expensive and complex techniques”.

While this is an initial success, researchers are looking for ways to create 2D sheets with more surface area and incorporate multiple metals in a single sheet.

### **Background**
Quantum dots are used for printing, LED, medicine and solar panels. This is why 2023 Nobel Prize was awarded to the researchers who quickly and reliably made them. The reason they are powerful is due to quantum confinement, where electrons are more restricted. The material is described as 1D or 2D depending on how much it confines its electrons. A quantum dot is considered to be zero-dimensional material: while its electrons can technically move in three dimensions, the volume available is so small that it might as well be a point in space.

This breakthrough promises to usher in a new era of technological advancements, pushing the boundaries of electronics, sensing, and computing, with potential impacts across numerous industries.

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