Mass production of 2D materials by intermediate-assisted grinding exfoliation

• 来源期刊: 国家科学评论（英文版）
• 关键词: 2D materials hexagonal boron nitrides transition metal dichalcogenides intermediary-assisted grinding exfoliation mass production
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（2）
• 页码范围: 324-332
• 页数: 9页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz156

摘要

The scalable and high-efficiency production of 2D materials is a prerequisite to their commercial use.Currently,only graphene and graphene oxide can be produced on a ton scale,and the inability to produce other 2D materials on such a large scale hinders their technological applications.Here we report a grinding exfoliation method that uses micro-particles as force intermediates to resolve applied compressive forces into a multitude of small shear forces,inducing the highly efficient exfoliation of layer materials.The method,referred to as intermediate-assisted grinding exfoliation (iMAGE),can be used for the large-scale production of many 2D materials.As an example,we have exfoliated bulk h-BN into 2D h-BN with large flake sizes,high quality and structural integrity,with a high exfoliation yield of 67％,a high production rate of 0.3 g h-1 and a low energy consumption of 3.01 × 106J g-1.The production rate and energy consumption are one to two orders of magnitude better than previous results.Besides h-BN,this iMAGE technology has been used to exfoliate various layer materials such as graphite,black phosphorus,transition metal dichalcogenides,and metal oxides,proving its universality.Molybdenite concentrate,a natural low-cost and abundant mineral,was used as a demo for the large-scale exfoliation production of2D MoS2 flakes.Our work indicates the huge potential of the iMAGE method to produce large amounts of various 2D materials,which paves the way for their commercial application.