Confinement Heteroepitaxy: A Novel Route for Realizaing Exotic 2D Materials

Advancement of nascent electronic quantum frontiers (spintronics, photonics, and sensing) has been mediated through development of materials platforms with non-trivial band topologies, allowing distinct access to quantum information otherwise lost through decoherence. However, access to the more exotic quantum phenomena within these frontiers still pose a materials challenge due to synthesis difficulties or small windows of performance, which render these routes limited in scalability. We have demonstrated facile synthesis of air-stable, atomically thin, single crystal two-dimensional (2D) metals (gallium, indium, tin, lead, and silver) within a silicon carbide and epitaxial graphene interface through high-pressure intercalation (i.e. confinement heteroepitaxy, or CHet). The non-centrosymmetric nature, coupled with potentially strong spin orbit coupling and superconductivity, in these 2D metals, suggest this novel synthesis route as an avenue for manifesting exotic effects (such as topological superconductivity) due to non-trivial band topology.