Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Leslie Schoop, Princeton University

About the Seminar
Chemical Exfoliation of Quantum Materials
A large portion of research in 2D materials is limited to mechanical exfoliation of van der Waals (vdW) materials. Chemical exfoliation is a relatively under-utilized route for preparing ultra-thin quantum materials, but it accesses 2D materials that cannot be obtained by mechanical “Scotch -taping.'” It is also a way to mass produce 2D materials, as mechanical taping only accesses small amounts, insufficient for industrial applications. However, chemical exfoliation comes with the drawback that it commonly introduces many defects into the 2D sheets. In this talk I will show the challenges of using chemical exfoliation for 2D quantum materials synthesis, to then introduce two systems in which the approach was successful.
I will show that we can use chemical exfoliation to synthesize large qualities of stable and magnetic monolayers of VOCl. Films of these high-quality sheets are shown to possess similar magnetic properties as the bulk crystals. I will also discuss the synthesis of a stable, aqueous ink of superconducting 1T'-WS2 monolayers. Films printed with the ink are superconducting below 7.3 K and show typical behavior of 2D superconductivity. This ink and its dried, printed version, is stable in ambient conditions. It is ideally suited for applications in flexible and printed electronics. Thus, we were able to establish that chemical exfoliation is of use for quantum materials synthesis.
About the Speaker
Dr. Schoop received her Diploma in Chemistry from Johannes Gutenberg University (2010) and PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University (2015). She then went on to work as a Minerva fast-track fellow under Professor Bettina Lotsch at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (2015-2017). Dr. Schoop joined the Princeton University Department of Chemistry Faculty in 2017 and was tenured in 2022. In 2019 she won the Beckman Young Investigator Award and became a Moore foundation EPiQS Materials Synthesis Investigator. In 2020 she was awarded the Packard fellowship for science and engineering and in 2021 the Sloan fellowship in Chemistry and the DOD Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award. In 2022 she was awarded the NSF CAREER award. The Schoop Lab is working at the interface of chemistry and physics, using chemical principles to find new materials with exotic physical properties.