The recent years interest in graphene started when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first managed to isolate the material by using the 'scotch-tape' method. This simply and "primitive" method eventually led to their Nobel-Prize in 2010, and the graphene boom started.

But atomic processes behind the micromechanical cleavage in this method have never been really understood - until now. A research team from Russia, the USA and Finland researched the physics, kinetics and energetics behind the regarded this method, using molybdenum disulphide (MoS₂) as the model material.

PlanarTech licensed a MoS2 process technology from Columbia University. The company can now provide comprehensive training to its customers in the growth of monolayer MoS2 by CVD using the methods developed at Columbia.

PlanarTech says they delivered their first MoS2-capable CVD system to the lab of Prof. Jongmin Kim at the University of Oxford.

Researchers from Purdue University developed a new graphene-like 2D material from phosphorus. They call the new material phosphorene and they say that this is the first native 2D p-type semiconductor, making it more useful than graphene to make transistors.

Together with MoS₂ (a 2D n-type semiconductor), it is now possible to build switches made from 2D materials. Graphene in its basic form is a superconductor and so is less suited to make transistors.

Researchers from Korea's Institute for Basic Science (IBS) developed a new way to synthesize single-layer molybdenum disulphide (MoS₂) using a gold catalyst. This new method allows MoS₂ to be synthesized within a large area and any desired geometrical shape, and to be produced in the form of a semiconductor device.

The researched used the principle that a surface alloy is formed through the separation of molybdenum atoms and mixing them with gold when a chemical compound containing molybdenum is injected onto the surface of gold.

Researchers from MIT are developing a new solar cell made from graphene and molybdenum disulfide. They hope to achieve the "ultimate power conversion possible". These panels will be thin, light and efficient - in fact the researchers claim that for the same weight, the new panels will be up to a 1,000 times more efficient than silicon based panels.

A solar cell made from a single graphene sheet and a single molybdenum disulfide sheet will achieve about 1% to 2% efficiency. Silicon based cells achieve 15%-20%, but the researchers believe that stacking several layers together will boost the efficiency dramatically. The two layers together are just 1 nm thick, while silicon cells are hundreds of thousands times thicker.

Researchers from Rice University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) found a new method to control the growth of uniform atomic layers of molybdenum disulfide (MDS), a semiconductor together with graphene can be used to make 2D electronic devices. Unlike graphene, MDS has a band gap.

The researchers goal is to create large MDS sheets (using CVD) and then use it together with graphene and the insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to form field-effect transistors, integrated logic circuits, photodetectors and flexible optoelectronics. MD5 isn't flat - it's actually a stack, with a layer of molybdenum atoms between two layers of sulfur atoms. It's a challenge to actually bind these three materials together.

Researchers from the DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory developed a new catalyst (made from Graphene, molybdenum and soybeans) and that could replace platinum in hyroden-production processes. This new catalyst is the best non-noble-metal one ever developed, and it's even better than a catalyst made from bulk platinum. It can be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be used regenerated into H2 and then be used as fuel.

To make the new catalyst, the researchers ground soybeans into a powder and then mixed it it with ammonium molybdate. Using a high-temperature carburization made the molybdenum react with the carbon and nitrogen in the soybean and that produced molybdenum carbides and molybdenum nitrides. The material was then anchored on sheets of graphene - and this makes the catalyst effecting in devices such as batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and water electrolyzers.

Researchers from Australia discovered that molybdenum oxides can be used to improve graphene’s charge-carrying capabilities. This can results in devices that are smaller and/or enable faster data transfer.

The researchers created new sheets of this hybrid material using exfoliation. Those sheets are 11 nanometers thick and can be turned into a semiconductor (to fabricate transistors for example). The final device features an electron mobility greater than 1,100 cm²/Vs - higher than the current standard for low dimensional silicon.

Graphene Laboratories is expanding their product line, and now they offer new 2D graphene-like materials. The new materials include liquid suspensions of atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), tungsten disulfide (WS2) both transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD’s) and boron nitride (BN).

The new materials are available at Graphene Lab's online store.

This is a guest post by Thanasis Georgiou, the Director of MoS2 Crystals, a Manchester based MoS2 Crystals and flakes provider.

Graphene has mesmerized the labs of hundreds of research groups worldwide. With its exceptional set of properties it is widely expected that it would find applications in a variety of areas. However, looking back on the work of the Nobel Laureates, their highly cited PNAS publication was entitled Two-dimensional atomic crystals(Novoselov et al., 2005). Indeed, graphene was just the first of many different crystalline materials that can be exfoliated and investigated. Graphene justifiably attracted such intense research due to its exotic Dirac-cone nature of its electronic spectrum.