Engineering Materials at the Atomic Scale for Energy, Environment and Health-Care Applications

Since its isolation, single atomically thin layer of graphite, called graphene by Geim and co-workers, has received a lot of attention from the research community as well as industry. Interesting and ground-breaking research has been published on graphene showing excellent properties and a wide range of applications. Taking inspiration from graphene, the materials community started atomically exploring materials, which resulted in the development of two-dimensional (2D) materials family consisting of elemental metals, metal carbides, dichalcogenide, oxide, nitride and others. Engineering such atomically thin materials is different from conventional materials. In the current summary, the different methods/processes of engineering materials at atomic scale have been summarized. In the first section, the exfoliation of 2D materials from their bulk phase and tuning their composition, thickness and other physical, chemical and optical properties are discussed. Taking inspiration from atomically engineered topological complex architectures have been 3D printed. Such architecture shows superior structural and functional properties. In the last section of the paper, nature-inspired processes have been utilized to build advanced/unique materials using energy-efficient method. These bio-inspired materials have been utilized in environment, energy and health care.