Ultrathin Two-Dimensional Multinary Layered Metal Chalcogenide Nanomaterials.

Ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), such as MoS2 , WS2 , TiS2 , TaS2 , ReS2 , MoSe2 and WSe2 , have attracted considerable attention over the past six years owing to their unique properties and great potential in a wide range of applications. Aiming to achieve tunable properties and optimal application performances, great effort is devoted to the exploration of 2D multinary layered metal chalcogenide nanomaterials, which include ternary metal chalcogenides with well-defined crystal structures, alloyed TMDs, heteroatom-doped TMDs and 2D metal chalcogenide heteronanostructures. These novel 2D multinary layered metal chalcogenide nanomaterials exhibit some unique properties compared to 2D binary TMD counterparts, thus holding great promise in various potential applications including electronics/optoelectronics, catalysis, sensors, biomedicine, and energy storage and conversion with enhanced performances. This article focuses on the state-of-art progress on the preparation, characterization and applications of ultrathin 2D multinary layered metal chalcogenide nanomaterials.