Following the advent of graphene, many other one-atom or one-molecule thick crystals have been isolated. They have become one of the hottest topics in materials science and condensed matter physics, and the interest is not going to fade for many years. Importantly, these isolated atomic planes can be reassembled into designer structures made layer by layer in a precisely chosen sequence. The first but already remarkably complex heterostructure devices have been fabricated and investigated.

I will overview our recent progress on van der Waals heterostructures but then will stray away from conventional topics and focus on phenomena - that can be of stronger industrial interest - such as water and ion transport through graphene nanocapillaries and proton transport through one-atom-thick crystals.