Wencai Ren

Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences


TITLE

Layered 2D MoSi2N4 family


Short Biography

Dr. Wencai Ren is a professor in materials science at the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests mainly focus on the synthesis of graphene and other two-dimensional materials and their applications in optoelectronics, energy storage, thermal management, and membrane technology. Prof. Ren has published over 200 peer-refereed papers in Science, Nature Mater., Nature Nanotechnol., Nature Commun., PNAS, etc. with a total citation over 36,000 times, owned 100 granted patents, and co-founded 3 graphene companies. He has received two National Natural Science Awards of China, HO LEUNG HO LEE FOUNDATION Prize for Scientific and Technological Innovation, and National Award for Excellence in Innovation. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of 2D Materials.

Abstract

Identifying 2D layered materials in the monolayer limit has led to discoveries of numerous new phenomena and unusual properties. We have developed a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to grow high-quality nonlayered 2D transition metal carbides/nitrides with diverse structures. Interestingly, we found that introducing elemental silicon during CVD growth of molybdenum nitride can passivate its surface dangling bonds, which enabled the growth of centimeter-scale monolayer films of a new van der Waals layered material, MoSi2N4. This monolayer material can be viewed as a monolayer MoN (MoN2) sandwiched between two Si-N bilayers and exhibited semiconducting behavior (bandgap, ~1.94 eV) with a potentially high carrier mobility up to 1200 cm2/Vs, high strength (~66 GPa), good thermal conductivity (~200 W/mK) and excellent ambient stability. When multilayer MoN was sandwiched between the two Si-N bilayers, a 2D superconducting MoSi2N4(MoN)4n homologous compound was formed. Density functional theory calculations further predicted a large family of MoSi2N4 structured 2D layered materials with a general formula MA2Z4, including semiconductors, metals, magnetic half-metals, superconductors, and topological insulators, which are expected to have promising applications in electronics, spintronics, valleytronics, optoelectronics, energy conversion and storage, and thermal management.

  • C. Xu, L. B. Wang, Z. B. Liu, L. Chen, J. K. Guo, N. Kang, X. L. Ma, H. M. Cheng, W. C. Ren, Large-area high-quality 2D ultrathin Mo2C superconducting crystals, Nature Materials 14 (2015) 1135-1141.
  • Y. L. Hong, Z. B. Liu, L. Wang, T. Y. Zhou, W. Ma, C. Xu, S. Feng, L. Chen, M. L. Chen, D. M. Sun, X. Q. Chen, H. M. Cheng, W. C. Ren, Chemical vapor deposition of layered two-dimensional MoSi2N4 materials, Science 369 (2020) 670-674.
  • Z.B. Liu, L. Wang, Y.L. Hong, X.Q. Chen, H.M. Cheng, W.C. Ren, Two-dimensional superconducting MoSi2N4(MoN)4n homologous compounds, National Science Review 10 (2023) nwac273.
  • L. Wang, Y.P. Shi, M.F. Liu, A. Zhang, Y.L. Hong, R.H. Li, Q. Gao, M.X. Chen, W.C. Ren, H.M. Cheng, Y.Y. Li, X.Q. Chen, Intercalated architecture of MA2Z4 family layered van der Waals materials with emerging topological, magnetic and superconducting properties, Nature Communcations 12 (2021) 2361.

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