Naturally occurring van der Waals materials

TL;DR

This paper reviews naturally occurring van der Waals minerals, highlighting their potential for 2D material research and encouraging exploration of their properties in the two-dimensional limit.

Contribution

It provides an overview of various natural van der Waals minerals, emphasizing their unexplored potential for 2D material applications.

Findings

Many natural van der Waals minerals remain unexplored in 2D form

Natural minerals exhibit diverse chemical compositions and structures

Potential for discovering novel 2D materials from natural sources

Abstract

The exfoliation of two naturally occurring van der Waals minerals, graphite and molybdenite, arouse an unprecedented level of interest by the scientific community and shaped a whole new field of research: 2D materials research. Several years later, the family of van der Waals materials that can be exfoliated to isolate 2D materials keeps growing, but most of them are synthetic. Interestingly, in nature plenty of naturally occurring van der Waals minerals can be found with a wide range of chemical compositions and crystal structures whose properties are mostly unexplored so far. This Perspective aims to provide an overview of different families of van der Waals minerals to stimulate their exploration in the 2D limit.