Optical, Electrical, Thermal, and Mechanical Properties of 2D Semiconducting Materials

Due to their unique electronic structures, two-dimensional semiconducting materials (2D-SCMs) exhibit fascinating physical and chemical properties down to the monolayer limit, different from their bulk counterparts. This chapter summarizes these properties from the viewpoints of optical, electrical, thermal, and mechanical aspects, focusing on transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). In the first section, we focus on strong many body interactions, rich excitonic states, and their tunability in TMDCs. In the second section, we introduce the electrical properties of 2D-SCMs and their tunability through molecular doping, electrostatic gating, electric double-layer gating, and electrochemical interactions. We also discuss semiconductor-insulator or superconductor-insulator transitions. In the third section, we describe the state-of-the-art characterization of the thermal and mechanical properties of 2D-SCMs, including the influence of interlayer coupling on these properties.