Heterostructures of Molecules and 2D Materials

Heterostructures of molecules and 2D materials merge the key features of 2D materials—crystalline order and delocalized excitations—with the chemical tunability, bright light emission, and reactivity inherent to molecules. Within the Research Center CRC1772, we aim to synthesize such heterostructures to identify new types of excitons and discover novel correlated states.

We explore:

• Ultrastrong electric fields generated by charge transfer between organic molecules and 2D materials.
• Widely tunable charge-transfer excitons formed by spatially separated carriers (e.g., an electron on the molecule and a hole on the 2D material).
• The realization of an excitonic insulator state accessible via charge-transfer excitons.
• The interface between nanoconfined water—a rich yet underexplored ubiquitous system—and 2D materials.

Key publications:

[1] Kovalchuk et al., Nature Comm 16, 9893 (2025).

[2] Weintrub et al., Nature Comm 13, 6601 (2022).