EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

One of the driving forces of the ongoing nanotechnology revolution is the ever-improving ability to understand and control the properties of quantum matter down to the atomic scale. Key drivers in this revolution are quantum materials, such as the two-dimensional (2D) materials of the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) family. The realization of novel TMD-based devices relies heavily on understanding the relation between structural and electrical properties at the nanoscale. The ultimate goal is that of crafting TMD nanostructures in a way that makes possible the tailored control of their properties. In this talk, recent studies illustrating novel fabrication approaches of TMD nanostructures based on combining top-down and bottom-up methods will be presented. These allow to control of the resulting geometries and material combinations, making possible the realization of novel functionalities such as metallic edge states arising in MoS$_2$ nanowalls and nanowires, enhanced nonlinear response in vertically-oriented MoS$_2$ nanostructures, and surface and edge plasmons in WS$_2$ nanoflowers. I will emphasize the crucial role that cutting-edge transmission electron microscopy techniques play in these studies, together with that of machine learning techniques which make possible extract a wealth of novel information that would be lost otherwise.