Universal production of 2D materials on arbitrary insulators

Abstract Synthesizing two-dimensional (2D) materials on insulating substrates is a fundamental requirement for applying low-dimensional materials towards fabricating next-generation nanodevices. However, preparing a 2D layered material, such as graphene or hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), on insulators is challenging owing to the lack of suitable metal catalysts, lattice matching, and other factors. Therefore, developing a generally applicable and efficient protocol remains crucial despite numerous strategies having been explored. Herein, we introduce a universal strategy for highly efficient preparation of wafer-scale single- crystal 2D materials on arbitrary insulating substrates. The foil in a non-adhered metal– insulator-substrate system was almost melted by a short-time high-temperature treatment to obtain 2D layers on the insulator. High quality, large-area, single-crystal, smooth with essentially wrinkle-free mono-, bi-, and tri-layered graphene, and monolayered hBN were fabricated on various insulating substrates. The developed strategy provides ideal growth templates for future wafer-scale syntheses of other single-crystal 2D materials on arbitrary insulating substrates.