A study by a team of Canadian and Italian researchers, recently published in Nature Materials, could represent a revolutionary breakthrough in materials science, leading to major changes in the way manufacturing companies create electronics.

The goal of the research project was to develop two-dimensional materials, which have a thickness of a single atomic layer, with additional functionality, extending the revolutionary developments in materials science that began with the discovery of graphene in 2004.

In total, 19 Canadian researchers from l'Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), McGill University, Lakehead University and from the National Research Council, Italy collaborated on the study.

This work opens up exciting new directions, both theoretical and experimental. The integration of this system into a device (e.g., Transistor) can lead to outstanding performance. In addition, these results will promote further studies on a wide range of two-dimensional conjugated polymers with different lattice symmetries, thus obtaining further insights into the structure versus properties of these systems.

The Italian/Canadian team has demonstrated the synthesis of two-dimensional conjugated polymers on a large scale, enhancing their electronic properties. They achieved success by combining the interdisciplinary skills of organic chemistry and surface treatment.

"This work represents an exciting development in the realization of two-dimensional functional materials beyond graphene," said Mark Gallagher, professor of physics at Lakehead University.

"I found it particularly rewarding to participate in this collaboration, which allowed us to combine our expertise in organic chemistry, condensed matter physics and materials science to achieve our goals."

Dmytro Perepichka, professor of chemistry at McGill University, said he has been working on this research for a long time.

"Structurally reconfigurable two-dimensional conjugated polymers can give a new breadth to applications of two-dimensional materials in electronics," Perepichka said.

"We started dreaming about them more than 15 years ago. It is only through this four-way collaboration, across the country and across continents, that this dream has become a reality."
Federico Rosei, a professor at the Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Center at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Varennes, who has held the Canadian chair in nanostructured materials research since 2016, said he is excited about the results of this collaboration.

"These results provide new information on the mechanisms of surface reactions at a fundamental level and simultaneously produce a new material with exceptional properties, the existence of which had only been predicted theoretically until now," he said.

This research was supported in part by an Italy-Quebec Grand Relevance project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate General for the Promotion of the Country System, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council for Canada, Fonds Québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies and a U.S. Army. Federico Rosei is also grateful to the Canada Research Chairs program for funding and partial stipend support.

Source: McGill Media Relations Office, McGill University