The world of 2D materials is a fascinating and rapidly evolving field, but it's also a bit of a wild west. Graphene, the star of the show, has been hailed as a revolutionary material, but its finicky nature and the reproducibility gap in research are slowing down its industrial translation. It's like trying to build a house of cards, where even the tiniest variation in lab conditions can topple the whole structure. This reproducibility gap is a major hurdle, and it's not just graphene that's affected. Other 2D materials, like hexagonal boron nitride and molybdenum disulfide, are also struggling to find their footing. But a group of experts from academia, industry, and funding bodies have come together to develop practical guidelines aimed at closing this gap. They've proposed a template for researchers to record experimental methods in far more detail than is usually required for academic papers, capturing the trials and tribulations of working with 2D materials. This template, known as STEP (Standardized Template for Experimental Procedures), is essentially a methods section on steroids. It guides researchers to break a procedure into a series of small steps and provide extensive details about things like materials, equipment, and variations in conditions such as pressure or temperature. Personally, I think this is a huge step forward for the field. It's like having an experienced postdoc next to you, explaining everything step by step. But it's not just about the template. The experts also propose an initiative for making reproducibility goals more prominent in funding proposals and published papers, known as the Reproducibility Charter (ReChart). This would act as a checklist that funders and publishers could use to allocate part of a grant for creating STEP protocols. In my opinion, this is a smart move. It's like giving researchers a nudge to focus on the most critical elements of their methods and potentially reveal areas that can be improved. But the challenge remains: how do we get enough stakeholders to actually implement these guidelines? It's like trying to get a herd of elephants to dance - it takes a little push and a lot of persistence. However, I believe that even a small shift could make a big difference. The strength of the STEP protocol is that it's not just limited to the field of 2D materials. It's a template that can be useful in many different fields, basically everything that is related to nanofabrication and clean room work. So, let's give it a try and see where it takes us. After all, the future of 2D materials and the innovations they could bring is too important to leave to chance.
