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.