Exceptionally high-rate production of few-layer MoS2 by a scalable and cost-effective gas-driven shear exfoliation method and its application for supercapacitors

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) few-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a versatile future electronic material with fascinating unique properties, but the commercialization of its’ applications is still hampered by high-rate production of few-layer MoS2 flakes on low-cost. Herein, we present a simple, scalable and cost-effective gas-driven shear exfoliation method for producing high-aspect-ratio few-layer MoS2 flakes with exceptionally high production rate. The gas-driven exfoliated MoS2 flakes, with an average thickness of 3 nm, show a reasonable large lateral dimension, with more than 10% of the flakes >1.0 μm and ∼73 % of the flakes in the range of 0.3–1.0 μm. In a lab-scale setup, the production rate reaches an impressive high value of 1.23 g/h, while the exfoliation energy consumption is as low as 0.175 kW⋅h/g. At an industrial level, the production rate can exceed 3 kg/h, marking a significant advancement towards the mass production of few-layer MoS2 on low-cost. As a proof-of-concept, the as-exfoliated few-layer MoS2 was employed as an active material for supercapacitor, which exhibited a good electrochemical performance with the specific capacity of 101.8 mAh/g. After 5000 cycles, the capacitance retention sustained at a high level of 92.9%.