First successful atomically thin sheets of magnetic Van der Waals material NiPS3

Heterostructures (referred to as Van der Waals {VdW}) are attracting a great deal of attention due to their diverse physical and chemical properties. A VdW heterostructure is assembled by stacking two or more different 2D semiconducting crystals on top of each other. The structure is grown by repeating the practice, the resulting stack represents an artificial material constructed in a certain sequence, akin to Lego blocks.