Recent progress on the preparation and applications of free-standing two-dimensional organic materials

Recently, free-standing two-dimensional (2D) organic materials have aroused tremendous research interest. These materials possess tunable compositional, structural, and chemical properties, which make them potential candidates in a wide range of applications such as in electronics, catalysis, molecular separation, sensing and so on. This review begins with an introduction on the classification and preparation methods of the free-standing 2D organic materials, including both the top-down and bottom-up methods, followed by the description of the various applications for these 2D materials, such as molecular recognition, electronic devices and fluoresent sensing. Finally, the current challenges and possible future directions for the 2D organic materials are discussed.