Growth of 2D semiconductors and topological insulators

2D semiconductors exhibiting strongly anisotropic properties and non-trivial topological phenomena offer new material opportunities to find solutions for the energy crisis and global warming. Re-discovered after a lot of work nearly four decades ago, renewed research efforts fueled by recent advances in thin film growth technology are directed towards accelerating 2D materials' discovery, facilitating their synthesis, and studying their intrinsic properties. This chapter summarizes pursued synthesis approaches and the resulting materials properties of the three most common materials' classes among the 2D van der Waals layered semiconductors and topological insulators; post transition metal monochalcogenides, transition metal dichalcogenides, and Bi/Sb-based sesquichalcogenides.