Synthetic Nanoarchitectonics of Functional Organic–Inorganic 2D Germanane Heterostructures via Click Chemistry

Succeeding graphene, 2D inorganic materials made of reactive van der Waals layers, like 2D germanane (2D-Ge) derivatives, have attracted great attention because their physicochemical characteristics can be entirely tuned by modulating the nature of the surface substituent. Although very interesting from a scientific point of view, almost all the reported works involving 2D-Ge derivatives are focused on computational studies. Herein, a first prototype of organic–inorganic 2D-Ge heterostructure has been synthesized by covalently anchoring thiol-rich carbon dots (CD–SH) onto 2D allyl germanane (2D-aGe) via a simple and green “one-pot” click chemistry approach. Remarkably, the implanted characteristics of the carbon nanomaterial provide new physicochemical features to the resulting 0D/2D heterostructure, making possible its implementation in yet unexplored optoelectronic tasks—e.g., as a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensing system triggered by supramolecular π–π interactions—that are inaccessible for the pristine 2D-aGe counterpart. Consequently, this work builds a foundation toward the robust achievement of functional organic–inorganic 2D-Ge nanoarchitectonics through covalently assembling thiol-rich carbon nanoallotropes on commercially available 2D-aGe.