There is an emergent demand for high-flexibility, high-sensitivity and low-power strain gauges capable of sensing small deformations and vibrations in extreme conditions. Enhancing the gauge factor remains one of the greatest challenges for strain sensors. This is typically limited to below 300 and set when the sensor is fabricated. We report a strategy to tune and enhance the gauge factor of strain sensors based on Van der Waals materials by tuning the carrier mobility and concentration through an interplay of piezoelectric and photoelectric effects. For a SnS₂ sensor we report a gauge factor up to 3933, and the ability to tune it over a large range, from 23 to 3933. Results from SnS₂, GaSe, GeSe, monolayer WSe₂, and monolayer MoSe₂ sensors suggest that this is a universal phenomenon for Van der Waals semiconductors. We also provide proof of concept demonstrations by detecting vibrations caused by sound and capturing body movements.

The existence of spontaneous magnetization in low dimensional magnetic systems has attracted intensive studies since the early 60s and research remains very active even now. Only recently, magnetic van der Waals (vdW) systems down to a few layers have been broadly discussed for their magnetic order ground states at finite temperature. The naturally inherited layered structure of the vdW magnetic systems possessing onsite magnetic anisotropy from band electrons can suppress the long‐range fluctuations. This provides an excellent vehicle to study the transition of magnetism to 2D limits both theoretically and experimentally. Here the current status of 2D vdW magnetic system and its potential applications are briefly summarized and discussed.

Miniaturized spectrometers have great potential for use in portable optoelectronics and wearable sensors. However, current strategies for miniaturization rely on von Neumann architectures, which separate the spectral sensing, storage, and processing modules spatially, resulting in high energy consumption and limited processing speeds due to the storage-wall problem. Here, we present a miniaturized spectrometer that utilizes a single SnS₂/ReSe₂ van der Waals heterostructure, providing photodetection, spectrum reconstruction, spectral imaging, long-term image memory, and signal processing capabilities. Interface trap states are found to induce a gate-tunable and wavelength-dependent photogating effect and a non-volatile optoelectronic memory effect. Our approach achieves a footprint of 19 μm, a bandwidth from 400 to 800 nm, a spectral resolution of 5 nm, and a > 10⁴s long-term image memory. Our single-detector computational spectrometer represents a path beyond von Neumann architectures.

We study heterostructures where a two-dimensional topological insulator (TI) is attached to two normal-metal (NM) electrodes while an island of a ferromagnetic insulator (FI) with precessing magnetization covers a portion of its lateral edges to induce time-dependent exchange field underneath via the magnetic proximity effect. When the FI island covers both lateral edges, such device pumps pure spin current in the absence of any bias voltage, thereby acting as an efficient spin battery with giant output current even at very small microwave power input driving the precession. When only one lateral edge is covered by the FI island, both charge and spin current are pumped into the NM electrodes. We delineate conditions for the corresponding conductances (current-to-microwave-frequency ratio) to be quantized in a wide interval of precession cone angles, which is robust with respect to weak disorder and can be further extended by changes in device geometry. The origin of the quantization is explained using spatial profiles of local spin and charge currents in the reference frame rotating with the magnetization, which concomitantly reveals how current exiting from the chiral spin-filtered edge states within the TI region remains largely confined to a narrow flux within the NM electrodes that is refracted at the TI$\mid${}NM interface.