  The exfoliation of two naturally occurring van der Waals minerals, graphite
and molybdenite, arouse an unprecedented level of interest by the scientific
community and shaped a whole new field of research: 2D materials research.
Several years later, the family of van der Waals materials that can be
exfoliated to isolate 2D materials keeps growing, but most of them are
synthetic. Interestingly, in nature plenty of naturally occurring van der Waals
minerals can be found with a wide range of chemical compositions and crystal
structures whose properties are mostly unexplored so far. This Perspective aims
to provide an overview of different families of van der Waals minerals to
stimulate their exploration in the 2D limit.
