Exfoliation of Alpha‐Germanium: A Covalent Diamond‐Like Structure

2D materials have opened a new field in science with outstanding scientific and technological impact. A largely explored route for the preparation of is exfoliation layered crystals weak forces between their layers. However, its application to covalent remains elusive. Herein, further step taken by introducing germanium, narrow-bandgap semiconductor presenting 3D diamond-like structure strong bonds. Pure α-germanium exfoliated following simple one-step procedure assisted wet ball-milling, allowing gram-scale fabrication high-quality layers large lateral dimensions nanometer thicknesses. The generated flakes are thoroughly characterized different techniques, giving evidence that material exhibits bandgaps depend on both crystallographic direction number Besides potential applications, this work also interest search properties.