Abstract
Liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) is a widely used and promising method for the production of 2D nanomaterials because it can be scaled up relatively easily. Nevertheless, the yields achieved by this process are still low, ranging between 2% and 5%, which makes the large-scale production of these materials difficult. In this report, we investigate the cause of these low yields by examining the sonication-assisted LPE of graphene, boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), and molybdenum disulfide nanosheets (MoS2 NS). Our results show that the low yields are caused by an equilibrium that is formed between the exfoliated nanosheets and the flocculated ones during the sonication process. This study provides an understanding of this behaviour, which prevents further exfoliation of nanosheets. By avoiding this equilibrium, we were able to increase the total yields of graphene, BNNSs, and MoS2 NS up to 14%, 44%, and 29%, respectively. Here, we demonstrate a modified LPE process that leads to the high-yield production of 2D nanomaterials.
Highlights
Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have gained worldwide attention in recent years because of their outstanding properties due to their structure and dimensionality.Graphene was the first 2D material that was successfully isolated and studied in 2004 byAndre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov [1]
The bulk materials used for the production of 2D nanosheets are as follows: graphite was purchased from Alfa Aesar GmbH & Co KG (Karlsruhe, Germany); hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), purchased from ESK Ceramics (3M Deutschland GmbH, Neuss, Germany); molybdenum disulfide (MoS2 ), purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH (Steinheim, Germany)
Despite the the liquid-phase liquid-phase exfoliation exfoliation being being aa promising promising method method for for the the large-scale large-scale production of materials, yields achieved by continuous sonication in previous production of 2D materials, yields achieved by continuous sonication in previous studies studies are low
Summary
Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have gained worldwide attention in recent years because of their outstanding properties due to their structure and dimensionality.Graphene was the first 2D material that was successfully isolated and studied in 2004 byAndre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov [1]. Graphene consists of sp2 -hybridised carbon atoms that are hexagonally arranged in a honeycomb lattice. This unique structure is responsible for many of graphene’s excellent mechanical, electrical, thermal, and optical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Due to these properties, graphene can be used in a variety of applications, ranging from nanoelectronics and energy storage to sensors and medicine [8,9,11,12,13,14,15,16]. In contrast to graphene and BNNSs, a TMD monolayer itself contains three layers of atoms (X-M-X), where the transition metal
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