Tartrate‐Assisted Ionic Layer Epitaxy for General Synthesis of 2D Nanostructures
The synthesis of ultrathin 2D nanomaterials with regular shapes and uniform thickness remains a challenge despite their intriguing properties. In this paper, a facile and generic strategy for the growth of versatile ultrathin nanosheets using tartrate-assisted ionic layer epitaxy (ILE) at the air-water interface is presented. Metal ions, stabilized by tartrate coordination, nucleate within the electrical double layer beneath a self-assembled monolayer. This method facilitates the growth of micro-sized hexagonal to wafer-scale continuous nanosheets from 26 metal elements, including single and multi-element compositions, with high precursor utilization via solution recycling. Furthermore, recognizing the need for efficient quality assessment, the successful application of a multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) for rapid and consistent evaluation of nanosheet quality from microscopy images, achieving performance comparable to human experts is demonstrated. This combined approach demonstrates a sustainable and high-throughput path for both 2D nanomaterial synthesis and automated quality assessment, accelerating materials discovery.
Authors
- Yutao Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3582-087X)
- Dane Morgan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4911-0046)
- Maciej P. Polak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7198-7779)
- Corey R. Carlos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9398-2554)
- Xudong Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9762-6792)
- Ziyi Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9102-8292)
- Derui Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-6346-704X)
Institutions
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Small Methods
- Published
- 2025-11-02
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/smtd.202501507
- Primary Topic
- Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Division of Materials Research