The interconversion between spin and charge degrees of freedom offers incredible potential for spintronic devices, opening routes for spin injection, detection, and manipulation alternative to the use of ferromagnets. The understanding and control of such interconversion mechanisms, which rely on spin–orbit coupling, is therefore an exciting prospect. The emergence of van der Waals materials possessing large spin–orbit coupling (such as transition metal dichalcogenides or topological insulators) and/or recently discovered van der Waals layered ferromagnets further extends the possibility of spin-to-charge interconversion to ultrathin spintronic devices. Additionally, they offer abundant room for progress in discovering and analyzing novel spin–charge interconversion phenomena. Modifying the properties of van der Waals materials through proximity effects is an added degree of tunability also under exploration. This Perspective discusses the recent advances toward spin-to-charge interconversion in van der Waals materials. It highlights scientific developments which include techniques for large-scale growth, device physics, and theoretical aspects.

High-throughput production of highly efficient photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution remains a considerable challenge for materials scientists. Here, we produced extremely uniform high-quality graphene and molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) nanoplatelets through the electrochemical-assisted liquid-phase exfoliation, out of which we subsequently fabricated MoS₂/graphene van der Waals heterostructures. Ultimately, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles were deposited into these two-dimensional heterostructures to produce an artificial ZnO/MoS₂/graphene nanocomposite. This new composite experimentally exhibited an excellent photocatalytic efficiency in hydrogen evolution under the sunlight illumination ( $\lambda >400 nm$ ), owing to the extremely high electron mobilities in graphene nanoplatelets and the significant visible-light absorptions of MoS₂. Moreover, due to the synergistic effects in MoS₂ and graphene, the lifetime of excited carriers increased dramatically, which considerably improved the photocatalytic efficiency of the ZnO/MoS₂/graphene heterostructure. We conclude that the novel artificial heterostructure presented here shows great potential for the high-efficient photocatalytic hydrogen generation and the high throughput production of visible-light photocatalysts for industrial applications.