Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has emerged as a strong candidate for twodimensional (2D) material owing to its exciting optoelectrical properties combined with mechanical robustness, thermal stability, and chemical inertness. Super-thin h-BN layers have gained significant attention from the scientific community for many applications, including nanoelectronics, photonics, biomedical, anti-corrosion, and catalysis, among others. This review provides a systematic elaboration of the structural, electrical, mechanical, optical, and thermal properties of h-BN followed by a comprehensive account of stateof-the-art synthesis strategies for 2D h-BN, including chemical exfoliation, chemical, and physical vapor deposition, and other methods that have been successfully developed in recent years. It further elaborates a wide variety of processing routes developed for doping, substitution, functionalization, and combination with other materials to form heterostructures. Based on the extraordinary properties and thermal-mechanical-chemical stability of 2D h-BN, various potential applications of these structures are described.The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under

There has been no experimental evidence for ferromagnetic ordering in isotropic atomically thin two-dimensional crystals, until a bilayer Cr 2 Ge 2 Te 6 and a three-atom thick monolayer CrI 3 is shown to retain ferromagnetic ordering at finite temperatures. Here, we demonstrate successful isolation of a nonvan der Waals-type ultrathin nanosheet of FeS 2 derived from naturally occurring pyrite mineral (FeS 2 ) by means of liquid-phase exfoliation. Structural characterizations imply that (111)-oriented sheets are predominant and are supported theoretically by means of density functional theory surface energy calculations. Spinpolarized density theory calculations further predicted that (111)oriented three-atom thick pyrite sheets have a stable ferromagnetic ground state different from their diamagnetic bulk counterparts. This theoretical finding is evaluated by experimentally employing low-temperature superconducting quantum interference device measurements, and an anomalous ferromagnetic kind of behavior is observed.

The friction of magnetene is found to be low despite its covalent bonding, which is correlated to its 2D confinement effects.

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