Chemically Tunable 2D Layered Materials: Acoustic Phonons, Charge Density Waves, & Phase Transitions

I will present an innovative strategy to intercalate atomic species including heavy metals, semiconductors, and semimetals (Ag, Au, Bi, Cr, Cu, Ge, Mn, Mo, Ni, Os, Pb, Pd, Pt, Rh, Ru, Sb, W) into 2D layered materials. With intercalation of zero-valent elements, fundamentally new physical behaviors arise such as chemically-controllable commensurate and incommensurate charge density waves, altered acoustic phonons as measured with Brillouin scattering, and chemically-tunable pressure-dependent phase transitions. This strategy can be further used to achieve 2D metal-semiconductor heterostructures or 2D semiconductor heterostructures with unique physical properies. Chemically tunable physical properties of intercalated Bi2Se3, Si2Te3, GeS and MoO3 are demonstrated.