Laser-ablative nanostructuring of van der Waals materials and prospects for biomedical applications

This presentation will overview our recent work on the nanostructuring of van der Waals (vdW) materials using a universal femtosecond laser ablation and fragmentation approach. Our method enables the transformation of more than 50 vdW materials—including transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), MXenes, perovskites, and Janus structures—into stable colloidal nanoparticles while preserving their crystalline order. The resulting nanostructures display diverse morphologies (spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, pyramids) and exceptional colloidal stability without surface ligands. We will highlight how this versatile strategy opens new pathways for applications in plasmonics, catalysis, sensing, and energy conversion, as well as in biomedicine, where vdW nanostructures show strong promise for photothermal therapy, photoacoustic imaging, and drug delivery.