Search for Low-Periodic Substructures in Crystalline Solids: A Novel Approach

The discovery of new 2D materials is vital for advancing electronics and quantum technologies. As most 2D materials originate from layered bulk structures, identifying exfoliable crystals and estimating the energy required to isolate a single layer are critical steps. To address this issue, we developed a robust and computationally cheap approach based on the crystal graph construction via Voronoi partition, interaction strength estimation via bond valence theory, and the iterative removal of weak links while tracing the periodicity changes. We validated our method against literature and ab initio results proving that it can reliably identify layers and provide an approximate estimate of the interlayer binding energy suitable as a screening parameter. We subsequently applied it to analyze a large set of 48,504 preselected experimental crystal structures, uncovering 694 previously unreported 2D materials belonging to 530 different structural prototypes. Finally, we used ab initio simulations to offer an overview the structural and electronic properties of the isolated layers.