Materials determine what our everyday world looks like and what technology is available to us. Progress in diverse industrial sectors, from heterogeneous catalysis to electronics microfabrication to energy storage applications, depends essentially on our ability to synthesise advanced materials. The last decade has seen the explosive advancement in 2D materials – hundreds of novel 2D materials have been synthesized, covering a wide range: metals, dielectrics, ferroelectrics, semiconductors, superconductors, magnets. Combining and engineering the physics and chemistry of atomic layers by van der Waals technology results in the creation of materials with previously inaccessible properties, leading to new physics that originates from both the intrinsic properties of 2D crystals and the synergy of interactions between them. Advances in 2D materials and van der Waals technology have generated new proof-of-principle devices, including flexible tunnel transistors, nanometre-thin light-emitting diodes, and ultra-sensitive photovoltaic sensors. Our group has been contributing to this exciting research field from the very early stages of its development. The accumulated knowledge on individual 2D materials, together with technological progress in van der Waals heterostructures, sets the big goal: new materials with bespoke properties, created on demand for the high-tech industry. This project will enable entirely new categories of materials, which impacts areas of advanced, nanoscale and functional materials, catalysis, materials for energy applications, for next-generation electronics, quantum, magnetic and spintronics technologies, among many others. By digitally addressing 2D chemistry, lateral heterojunctions and vertical heterostructures will be created, realising the direct synthesis of devices instead of individual materials. In a long run, this approach will lead to programmable matter, which changes its properties in response to programmed input or autonomous sensing.
