Van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors are attractive for highly scaled devices and heterogeneous integration since they can be isolated into self-passivated, two-dimensional (2D) layers that enable superior electrostatic control. These attributes have led to numerous demonstrations of field-effect devices ranging from transistors to triodes. By exploiting the controlled, substitutional doping schemes in covalently-bonded, three-dimensional (3D) semiconductors and the passivated surfaces of 2D semiconductors, one can construct devices that can exceed performance metrics of 'all-2D' vdW heterojunctions. Here, we demonstrate, 2D/3D semiconductor heterojunctions using MoS2 as the prototypical 2D semiconductor laid upon Si and GaN as the 3D semiconductor layers. By tuning the Fermi levels in MoS2, we demonstrate devices that concurrently exhibit over seven orders of magnitude modulation in rectification ratios and conductance. Our results further suggest that the interface quality does not necessarily affect Fermi-level tuning at the junction opening up possibilities for novel 2D/3D heterojunction device architectures.
A general self-aligned fabrication scheme is reported here for a diverse class of electronic devices based on van der Waals materials and heterojunctions. In particular, self-alignment enables the fabrication of source-gated transistors in monolayer MoS2 with near-ideal current saturation characteristics and channel lengths down to 135 nm. Furthermore, self-alignment of van der Waals p-n heterojunction diodes achieves complete electrostatic control of both the p-type and n-type constituent semiconductors in a dual-gated geometry, resulting in gate-tunable mean and variance of anti-ambipolar Ga…
We reveal stacking-induced strong coupling between atomic motion and interlayer excitons through photocurrent measurements of WSe$_2$/MoSe$_2$ heterojunction photodiodes. Strong coupling manifests as pronounced periodic sidebands in the photocurrent spectrum in frequency windows close to the interlayer exciton resonances. The sidebands, which repeat over large swathes of the interlayer exciton photocurrent spectrum, occur in energy increments corresponding directly to a prominent vibrational mode of the heterojunction. Such periodic patterns, together with interlayer photoconductance oscillati…
Charge transfer plays a key role at the interfaces of heterostructures, which can affect electronic structures and ultimately the physical properties of the materials. However, charge transfer is difficult to manipulate externally once the interface formed. Here, we report electrically tunable charge transfer in Fe3GeTe2/Cr2Ge2Te6/Fe3GeTe2 all-magnetic van der Waals heterostructures, which can be exploited to selectively modify the magnetic properties of the top or bottom Fe3GeTe2 electrodes. The directional charge transfer from metallic Fe3GeTe2 to semiconducting Cr2Ge2Te6 remarkably modifies…
van der Waals (vdW) heterojunctions formed by two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted tremendous attention due to their excellent electrical/optical properties and device applications. However, current 2D heterojunctions are largely limited to atomic crystals, and hybrid organic/inorganic structures are rarely explored. Here, we fabricate hybrid 2D heterostructures with p-type dioctylbenzothienobenzothiophene (C8-BTBT) and n-type MoS2. We find that few-layer C8-BTBT molecular crystals can be grown on monolayer MoS2 by vdW epitaxy, with pristine interface and controllable thickness down t…
The recent emergence of a wide variety of two-dimensional (2D) materials has created new opportunities for device concepts and applications. In particular, the availability of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, in addition to semi-metallic graphene and insulating boron nitride, has enabled the fabrication of all 2D van der Waals heterostructure devices. Furthermore, the concept of van der Waals heterostructures has the potential to be significantly broadened beyond layered solids. For example, molecular and polymeric organic solids, whose surface atoms possess saturated bonds, ar…
Semiconductor heterostructures form the cornerstone of many electronic and optoelectronic devices and are traditionally fabricated using epitaxial growth techniques. More recently, heterostructures have also been obtained by vertical stacking of two-dimensional crystals, such as graphene and related two- dimensional materials. These layered designer materials are held together by van der Waals forces and contain atomically sharp interfaces. Here, we report on a type- II van der Waals heterojunction made of molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide monolayers. The junction is electrically tu…
Interfacial charge separation and recombination at heterojunctions of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are of interest to two dimensional optoelectronic technologies. These processes can involve large changes in parallel momentum vector due to the confinement of electrons and holes to the K-valleys in each layer. Since these high-momentum valleys are usually not aligned across the interface of two TMDC monolayers, how parallel momentum is conserved in the charge separation or recombination process becomes a key question. Here we probe this question using the model system of a…
Van der Waals heterojunctions between two-dimensional (2D) layered materials and nanomaterials of different dimensions present unique opportunities for gate-tunable optoelectronic devices. Mixed dimensional p-n heterojunction diodes, such as p-type pentacene (0D) and n-type monolayer MoS2 (2D), are especially interesting for photovoltaic applications where the absorption cross-section and charge transfer processes can be tailored by rational selection from the vast library of organic molecules and 2D materials. Here, we study the kinetics of excited carriers in pentacene-MoS2 p-n type-II heter…
Van der Waals (vdW) heterojunctions composed of 2-dimensional (2D) layered materials are emerging as a solid-state materials family that exhibit novel physics phenomena that can power high performance electronic and photonic applications. Here, we present the first demonstration of an important building block in vdW solids: room temperature (RT) Esaki tunnel diodes. The Esaki diodes were realized in vdW heterostructures made of black phosphorus (BP) and tin diselenide (SnSe2), two layered semiconductors that possess a broken-gap energy band offset. The presence of a thin insulating barrier bet…
A variety of fabrication methods for van der Waals heterostructures have been demonstrated; however, their wafer-scale deposition remains a challenge. Here we report few-layer van der Waals PtS2/PtSe2 heterojunction photodiodes fabricated on a 2" SiO2/Si substrate that is only limited by the size of work chamber of the growth equipment, offering throughputs necessary for practical applications. Theoretical simulation results show that the bandgap of PtS2 is shrunk to half of its original size in the PtS2/PtSe2 heterostructures, while PtSe2 exhibits a limited response to the coupling. Both PtSe…
Generators of random sequences used in high-end applications such as cryptography rely on entropy sources for their indeterminism. Physical processes governed by the laws of quantum mechanics are excellent sources of entropy available in nature. However, extracting enough entropy from such systems for generating truly random sequences is challenging while maintaining the feasibility of the extraction procedure for real-world applications. Here, we present a compact and an all-electronic van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure-based device capable of detecting discrete charge fluctuations for extra…
The availability of transistors capable of operating at low supply voltage is essential to improve the key performance metric of computing circuits, i.e., the number of operations per unit energy. In this paper, we propose a new device concept for energy-efficient, steep-slope transistors based on heterojunctions of 2D materials. We show that by injecting electrons from an isolated and weakly dispersive band into a strongly dispersive one, subthermionic subthreshold swings can be obtained, as a result of a cold-source effect and of a reduced thermalization of carriers. This mechanism is implem…
The band structure of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with valence band edges at different locations in the momentum space could be harnessed to build devices that operate relying on the valley degree of freedom. To realize such valleytronic devices, it is necessary to control and manipulate the charge density in these valleys, resulting in valley polarization. While this has been demonstrated using optical excitation, generation of valley polarization in electronic devices without optical excitation remains difficult. Here, we demonstrate spin injection from a ferromagnetic electrode…
In-Plane Anisotropy-Driven Directional Charge Transport in van der Waals p-n Heterojunction
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science(印度科学文化促进协会);Sincrotrone Trieste s.c.p.a.(的里雅斯特同步辐射中心);Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati(蒂鲁帕提印度理工学院);UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research(UGC-DAE科学研究联盟)
We present, here, advanced DFT-NEGF techniques that we have implemented in our ATOmistic MOdelling Solver, ATOMOS, to explore transport in novel materials and devices and in particular in van-der-Waals heterojunction transistors. We describe our methodologies using plane-wave DFT, followed by a Wannierization step, and linear combination of atomic orbital DFT, that leads to an orthogonal and non-orthogonal NEGF model, respectively. We then describe in detail our non-orthogonal NEGF implementation including the Sancho-Rubio and electron-phonon scattering within a non-orthogonal framework. We al…
Phosphorene, an elemental 2D material, which is the monolayer of black phosphorus, has been mechanically exfoliated recently. In its bulk form, black phosphorus shows high carrier mobility (~10000 cm2/Vs) and a ~0.3 eV direct bandgap. Well-behaved p-type field-effect transistors with mobilities of up to 1000 cm2/Vs, as well as phototransistors, have been demonstrated on few-layer black phosphorus, showing its promise for electronics and optoelectronics applications due to its high hole mobility and thickness-dependence direct bandgap. However, p-n junctions, the basic building blocks of modern…
Spin-valve effect has been the focus of spintronics over the last decades due to its potential in many spintronic devices. Two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials are highly expected to build the spin-valve heterojunction. However, the Curie temperatures (TC) of the vdW ferromagnetic 2D crystals are mostly below room temperature (~30-220 K). It is very challenging to develop room temperature, ferromagnetic (FM) 2D crystals based spin-valve devices which are still not available to date. We report the first room temperature, FM 2D crystal based all-2D vdW Fe3GaTe2/MoS2/Fe3GaTe2 spin v…
The emergence of semiconducting materials with inert or dangling bond-free surfaces has created opportunities to form van der Waals heterostructures without the constraints of traditional epitaxial growth. For example, layered two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors have been incorporated into heterostructure devices with gate-tunable electronic and optical functionalities. However, 2D materials present processing challenges that have prevented these heterostructures from being produced with sufficient scalability and/or homogeneity to enable their incorporation into large-area integrated circuits…
We report experimental measurements for ultrathin (< 15 nm) van der Waals heterostructures exhibiting external quantum efficiencies exceeding 50%, and show that these structures can achieve experimental absorbance > 90%. By coupling electromagnetic simulations and experimental measurements, we show that pn WSe2/MoS2 heterojunctions with vertical carrier collection can have internal photocarrier collection efficiencies exceeding 70%.
Van der Waals materials exhibit naturally passivated surfaces and can form versatile heterostructures, enabling observation of carrier transport mechanisms not seen in three-dimensional materials. Here we report observation of a "band bending junction", a new type of semiconductor homojunction whose surface potential landscape depends solely on a difference in thickness between the two semiconductor regions atop a buried heterojunction interface. Using MoS2 on Au to form a buried heterojunction interface, we find that lateral surface potential differences can arise in MoS2 from the local exten…
Moiré patterns are common in Van der Waals heterostructures and can be used to apply periodic potentials to elementary excitations. We show that the optical absorption spectrum of transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers is profoundly altered by long period moiré patterns that introduce twist-angle dependent satellite excitonic peaks. Topological exciton bands with non-zero Chern numbers that support chiral excitonic edge states can be engineered by combining three ingredients: i) the valley Berry phase induced by electron-hole exchange interactions, ii) the moiré potential, and iii) the valle…
Low power consumption in both static and dynamic modes of operation is a key requirement in modern, highly scaled nanoelectronics. Tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs) that exploit direct band-to-band tunneling of charges and exhibit steep sub-threshold slope (SS) transfer characteristics are an attractive option in this regard. However, current generation of Si and III-V heterojunction based TFETs while suffer from low ON current density and ON/OFF current ratios for < 60 mV/dec operation. Semiconducting two-dimensional (2D) layers have recently renewed enthusiasm in novel device design…
Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors have shown great promise in (opto)electronic applications. However, their developments are limited by a large Schottky barrier (SB) at the metal-semiconductor junction (MSJ), which is difficult to tune by using conventional metals due to the strong Fermi level pinning (FLP) effect. Here we show that, this problem can be overcome by using 2D metals, which are bounded with 2D semiconductors through van der Waals (vdW) interaction. This success relies on a weak FLP at the vdW MSJ, which is attributed to the suppression of metal-induced gap states. Consequently,…
Excitons dominate the optics of atomically-thin transition metal dichalcogenides and 2D van der Waals heterostructures. Interlayer 2D excitons, with an electron and a hole residing in different layers, form rapidly in heterostructures either via direct charge transfer or via Coulomb interactions that exchange energy between layers. Here, we report prominent intertube excitonic effects in quasi-1D van der Waals heterostructures consisting of C/BN/MoS$_2$ core/shell/skin nanotubes. Remarkably, under pulsed infrared excitation of excitons in the semiconducting CNTs we observed a rapid (sub-picose…
The integration of different two-dimensional materials within a multilayer van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure offers a promising technology for realizing high performance opto-electronic devices such as photodetectors and light sources1-3. Transition metal dichalcogenides, e.g. MoS2 and WSe2, have been employed as the optically-active layer in recently developed heterojunctions. However, MoS2 and WSe2 become direct band gap semiconductors only in mono- or bilayer form4,5. In contrast, the metal monochalcogenides InSe and GaSe retain a direct bandgap over a wide range of layer thicknesses from…
Recent progress in preparing well controlled 2D van der Waals heterojunctions has opened up a new frontier in materials physics. In this paper we address the intriguing energy gaps that are sometimes observed when a graphene sheet is placed on a hexagonal boron nitride substrate, demonstrating that they are produced by an interesting interplay between structural and electronic properties, including electronic many-body exchange interactions. Our theory is able to explain the observed gap behavior by accounting first for the structural relaxation of graphene's carbon atoms when placed on a boro…
Van der Waals heterostructures formed by stacking different atomically thin layered materials have emerged as the sought-after device platform for electronic and optoelectronic applications. Determining the spatial extent of all the encapsulated components in such vertical stacks is key to optimal fabrication methods and improved device performance. Here we employ electrostatic force microscopy as a fast and non-invasive microscopic probe that provides compelling images of two dimensional layers buried over 30 nm below the sample surface. We demonstrate the versatility of the technique by stud…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new type of materials under intense study because of their interesting physical properties and wide range of potential applications from nanoelectronics to sensing and photonics. Monolayers of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2 or WSe2 have been proposed as promising channel materials for field-effect transistors (FETs). Their high mechanical flexibility, stability and quality coupled with potentially inexpensive production methods offer potential advantages compared to organic and crystalline bulk semiconductors. Due to quantum mechanical…
Graphene-based vertical heterostructures, particularly stacks incorporated with other layered materials, are promising for nanoelectronics. The stacking of two model Dirac materials, graphene and topological insulator, can considerably enlarge the family of van der Waals heterostructures. Despite well understanding of the two individual materials, the electron transport properties of a combined vertical heterojunction are still unknown. Here we show the experimental realization of a vertical heterojunction between Bi2Se3 nanoplate and monolayer graphene. At low temperatures, the electron trans…
We investigated the electronic and optoelectronic properties of vertical van der Waals heterostructure photodetectors using layered p type GaSe and n type InSe, with graphene as the transparent electrodes. Not only the photocurrent peaks from the layered GaSe and InSe themselves were observed, also the interlayer optical transition peak was observed, which is consistent with the first-principles calculation. The built-in electric field between p-n heterojunction and the advantage of the graphene electrodes can effectively separate the photo-induced electron-hole pairs, and thus lead to the res…
We investigate van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures made of germanene, stanene or silicene with hexagonal Boron Nitride (h-BN). The intriguing topological properties of these buckled honeycomb materials can be maintained and further engineered in the heterostructures, where the competition between the substrate effect and external electric fields can be used to control the tunable topological phase transitions. Using such heterostructures as building blocks, various vdW topological domain walls (DW) are designed, along which there exist valley polarized quantum spin Hall edge states or valley-…
Ferromagnetic van der Waals (vdW) materials are in demand for spintronic devices with all-two-dimensional-materials heterostructures. Here, we demonstrate mechanical exfoliation of magnetic-atom-intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide Cr1/3TaS2 from its bulk crystal; previously such intercalated materials were thought difficult to exfoliate. Magnetotransport in exfoliated tens-of-nanometres-thick flakes revealed ferromagnetic ordering below its Curie temperature TC ~ 110 K as well as strong in-plane magnetic anisotropy; these are identical to its bulk properties. Further, van der Waals he…
The Kohn-Luttinger envelope-function method is generalized to the case of heterostructures with atomically sharp heterojunctions based on lattice-matched layers of related semiconductors with zinc-blende symmetry. For electron states near the Γpoint in (001) heterostructures the single-band effective-mass equation is derived, taking into account both the spatial dependence of the effective mass and effects associated with the atomically sharp heterojunctions. A small parameter is identified, in powers of which it is possible to classify the various contributions to this equation. For hole stat…
PN heterojunctions comprising layered van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors have been used to demonstrate current rectifiers, photodetectors, and photovoltaic devices. However, a direct or near-direct bandgap at the heterointerface that can significantly enhance optical generation, for high light absorbing few/multi-layer vdW materials, has not yet been shown. In this work, for the first time, few-layer group-6 transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) $WSe_2$ is shown to form a sizeable (0.7 eV) near-direct bandgap with type-II band alignment at its interface with the group-7 TMD $ReS_2$ through den…
Backward diodes conduct more efficiently in the reverse bias than in the forward bias, providing superior high frequency response, temperature stability, radiation hardness, and 1/f noise performance than a conventional diode conducting in the forward direction. Here we demonstrate a van der Waals material based backward diode by exploiting the giant staggered band offsets of WSe2/SnSe2 vertical heterojunction. The diode exhibits an ultra-high reverse rectification ratio (R) of ~2.1x10^4 and the same is maintained up to an unusually large bias of 1.5 V - outperforming existing backward diode r…
Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures formed by 2D atomic crystals provide a powerful approach towards designer condensed matter systems. Incommensurate heterobilayers with small twisting and/or lattice mismatch lead to the interesting concept of Moiré superlattice, where the atomic registry is locally indistinguishable from commensurate bilayers but has local-to-local variation over long range. Here we show that such Moiré superlattice can lead to periodic modulation of local topological order in vdW heterobilayers formed by two massive Dirac materials. By tuning the vdW heterojunction from no…
Two-dimensional materials (2D) arranged in hybrid van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures provide a route toward the assembly of 2D and conventional III-V semiconductors. Here, we report the structural and electronic properties of single layer WSe2 grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Se-terminated GaAs(111)B. Reflection high-energy electron diffraction images exhibit sharp streaky features indicative of a high-quality WSe2 layer produced via vdW epitaxy. This is confirmed by in-plane x-ray diffraction. The single layer of WSe2 and the absence of interdiffusion at the interface are confirmed by hig…
The exfoliation of two naturally occurring van der Waals minerals, graphite and molybdenite, arouse an unprecedented level of interest by the scientific community and shaped a whole new field of research: 2D materials research. Several years later, the family of van der Waals materials that can be exfoliated to isolate 2D materials keeps growing, but most of them are synthetic. Interestingly, in nature plenty of naturally occurring van der Waals minerals can be found with a wide range of chemical compositions and crystal structures whose properties are mostly unexplored so far. This Perspectiv…
Gate-Tunable Mid-Infrared Electroluminescence from Te/MoS2 p-n Heterojunctions
Peking University(北京大学);Hunan University(湖南大学);University of Science and Technology of China(中国科学技术大学);Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院);Hunan Normal University(湖南师范大学);Zhengzhou University(郑州大学)
This study outlines the synthesis and physicochemical characteristics of a solution-processable iron manganite (FeMnO3) nanoparticles via a chemical combustion method using tartartic acid as a fuel and demonstrates the performance of this material as a n-type photoactive layer in all-oxide solar cells. It is shown that the solution combustion synthesis (SCS) method enables the formation of pure crystal phase FeMnO3 with controllable particle size. XRD pattern and morphology images from TEM confirm the purity of FeMnO3 phase and the relative small crystallite size (~13 nm), firstly reported in …
Heat dissipation is a very critical problem for designing nano-functional devices, including MoS2/Graphene heterojunctions. In this paper we investigate thermal transport in MoS2/Graphene hybrid nanosheets under various heating conditions, by using molecular dynamics simulation. Diverse transport processes and characteristics, depending on the conducting layers, are found in these structures. The thermal conductivities can be tuned by interlayer coupling, environment temperature and interlayer overlap. The highest thermal conductivity at room temperature is achieved as more than 5 times of tha…
The p-n junction diode and field-effect transistor (FET) are the two most ubiquitous building blocks of modern electronics and optoelectronics. In recent years, the emergence of reduced dimensionality materials has suggested that these components can be scaled down to atomic thicknesses. Although high performance field-effect devices have been achieved from monolayered materials and their heterostructures, a p-n heterojunction diode derived from ultrathin materials is notably absent and constrains the fabrication of complex electronic and optoelectronic circuits. Here, we demonstrate a gate-tu…
A typical graphene heterojunction device can be divided into two classical zones, where the transport is basically diffusive, separated by a "quantum active region" (e.g., a locally gated region), where the charge carriers are scattered according to the laws of quantum mechanics.In this paper we derive a mathematical model of such a device, where the classical regions are described by drift-diffusion equations and the quantum zone is seen as an interface where suitable transmission conditions are imposed that take into account the quantum scattering process. Numerical simulations show good agr…
Electric field screening plays an important role in the physical and chemical properties of materials and their devices. Here, we use a compelling set of theoretical and experimental techniques involving van der Waals (vdW) ab initio density functional theory (DFT) simulations, quantum capacitance-based classical model and electric force microscopy (EFM) to elucidate the intrinsic dielectric screening properties of vdW heterostructures (vdWHs) formed by MoS2 and graphene layers. We experimentally observed an asymmetric electric response in the MoS2/Graphene vdWHs under different directions of …
Van der Waals heterostructures have recently emerged as a new class of materials, where quantum coupling between stacked atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) layers, including graphene, hexagonal-boron nitride, and transition metal dichalcogenides (MX2), give rise to fascinating new phenomena. MX2 heterostructures are particularly exciting for novel optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications, because 2D MX2 monolayers can have an optical bandgap in the near-infrared to visible spectral range and exhibit extremely strong light-matter interactions. Theory predicts that many stacked MX2 heteros…
Semiconductor p-n junctions are essential building blocks for modern electronics and optoelectronics. In conventional semiconductors, a p-n junction produces depletion regions of free charge carriers at equilibrium and built-in potentials associated with uncompensated dopant atoms. Carrier transport across the junction occurs by diffusion and drift processes defined by the spatial extent of this region. With the advent of atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) materials and their heterostructures, we are now able to realize a p-n junction at the ultimate quantum limit. In particular, vdW junction…
The recent emergence of 2D van der Waals magnets down to atomic layer thickness provides an exciting platform for exploring quantum magnetism and spintronics applications. The van der Waals nature stabilizes the long-range ferromagnetic order as a result of magnetic anisotropy. Furthermore, giant tunneling magnetoresistance and electrical control of magnetism have been reported. However, the potential of 2D van der Waals magnets for magnonics, magnon-based spintronics, has not been explored yet. Here, we report the experimental observation of long-distance magnon transport in quasi-twodimensio…
The van der Waals heterostructures are a fertile frontier for discovering emergent phenomena in condensed matter systems. They are constructed by stacking elements of a large library of two-dimensional materials, which couple together through van der Waals interactions. However, the number of possible combinations within this library is staggering, and fully exploring their potential is a daunting task. Here we introduce van der Waals metamaterials to rapidly prototype and screen their quantum counterparts. These layered metamaterials are designed to reshape the flow of ultrasound to mimic ele…
Van der Waals-Casimir dispersion interactions between two apposed graphene layers, a graphene layer and a substrate, and in a multilamellar graphene system are analyzed within the framework of the Lifshitz theory. This formulation hinges on a known form of the dielectric response function of an undoped or doped graphene sheet, assumed to be of a random phase approximation form. In the geometry of two apposed layers the separation dependence of the van der Waals-Casimir interaction for both types of graphene sheets is determined and compared with some well known limiting cases. In a multilamell…
The emergence of graphene and two-dimensional van der Walls materials renewed interest to investigation of the low-frequency noise in the low-dimensional systems. The layered van der Waals materials offers unique opportunities for studying the low-frequency noise owing to the properties controlled by the thickness of these materials, and tunable carrier concentration. In this review, we describe unusual low-frequency noise phenomena in quasi-2D and quasi-1D van der Waals materials. We also demonstrate that the low-frequency noise spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigation of the electro…
There has been a huge increase of interests in two-dimensional van der Waals materials over the past ten years or so with the conspicuous absence of one particular class of materials: magnetic van der Waals systems. In this Viewpoint, we point it out and illustrate how we might be able to benefit from exploring these so-far neglected materials.