Universal Oriented van der Waals Epitaxy of 1D Cyanide Chains on Hexagonal 2D Crystals.

The atomic or molecular assembly on 2D materials through the relatively weak van der Waals interaction is quite different from the conventional heteroepitaxy and may result in unique growth behaviors. Here, it is shown that straight 1D cyanide chains display universal epitaxy on hexagonal 2D materials. A universal oriented assembly of cyanide crystals (AgCN, AuCN, and CuAuCN) is observed, where the chains are aligned along the three zigzag lattice directions of various 2D hexagonal crystals (graphene, h-BN, WS, MoS, WSe, MoSe, and MoTe).