Production Methods and Energy Applications of Borophene

Abstract

Two dimensional materials have unique physical, chemical and electrical properties. Many theoretical studies on borophene revealed important possible properties, such as metallicity, transparency, conductivity and chemical activity; due to vacancies present in its structure. It was first synthesized in 2015 and experimental studies on this new exciting 2D material is few in number. It was found that many of these studies still focus on expensive and sophisticated production methods such as Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). Although graphene, first of these 2D materials, is being studied more than two decades, it could not do the expected impact on energy industry due to lack of production methods in industrial scale. In this review, it was intended to build a narrative on the experimental production methods and resulting structures of borophene rather than theoretical background. It was found that liquid phase exfoliation method to synthesize borophene sheets might be the most promising method to upscale borophene production. Theoretical, computational and experimental studies suggested that β12 and χ3 borophene structures were stable and could be produced by sonochemical exfoliation method. In addition, possible uses in energy applications and some future prospects were also discussed. Borophene produced this way, might be used in batteries, supercapacitors hydrogen evolution (HER) and oxygen evolution (OER) reactions.