van der Waals Solids from Self-Assembled Nanoscale Building Blocks

Traditional atomic van der Waals materials such as graphene, hexagonal boron-nitride, and transition metal dichalcogenides have received widespread attention due to the wealth of unusual physical and chemical behaviors that arise when charges, spins, and vibrations are confined to a plane. Though not as widespread as their atomic counterparts, molecule-based two-dimensional (2D) layered solids offer significant benefits; their structural flexibility will enable the development of materials with tunable properties. Here we describe a layered van der Waals solid self-assembled from a structure-directing building block and C60 fullerene. The resulting crystalline solid contains a corrugated monolayer of neutral fullerenes and can be mechanically exfoliated. The absorption spectrum of the bulk solid shows an optical gap of 390 ± 40 meV that is consistent with thermal activation energy obtained from electrical transport measurement. We find that the dimensional confinement of fullerenes significantly modulates...