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Register a new userGlue-Assisted Grinding Exfoliation of Large-Size 2D Materials for Insulating Thermal Conduction and Large-Current-Density Hydrogen Evolution
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Two-dimensional (2D) materials have many promising applications, but their scalable production remains challenging. Herein, we develop a glue-assisted grinding exfoliation (GAGE) method in which the adhesive polymer acts as a glue to massively produce 2D materials with large lateral sizes, high quality, and high yield. Density functional theory simulation shows that the exfoliation mechanism involves the competition between the binding energy of selected polymers and the 2D materials which is larger than the exfoliation energy of the layered materials. Taking h-BN as an example, the GAGE produces 2D h-BN with an average lateral size of 2.18 {mu}m and thickness of 3.91 nm. The method is also extended to produce various other 2D materials, including graphene, MoS2, Bi2O2Se, vermiculite, and montmorillonite. Two representative applications of thus-produced 2D materials have been demonstrated, including h-BN/polymer composites for insulating thermal conduction and MoS2 electrocatalysts for large-current-density hydrogen evolution, indicating the great potential of massively produced 2D materials.
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The scalable and high-efficiency production of two-dimensional (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 3.01x10^6 J 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 of 2D 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.
The high-throughput scalable production of cheap, efficient and durable electrocatalysts that work well at high current densities demanded by industry is a great challenge for the large-scale implementation of electrochemical technologies. Here we report the production of a 2D MoS2-based ink-type electrocatalyst by a scalable top-down exfoliation technique followed by a simple heat treatment. The catalyst shows a high current density of 1000 mA cm^-2 at an overpotential of 454 mV for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) without the need of iR correction, as well as good stability over 24 hours. Using the same method, we have, for the first time, produced a cheap MoS2 mineral-based catalyst and found that it had an excellent performance for high-current-density HER. Noteworthy, production rate of this MoS2-based catalyst is one to two orders of magnitude higher than those previously reported. In addition, the price of the MoS2 mineral is five orders of magnitude lower than commercial Pt catalysts, making the MoS2 mineral-based catalyst cheap, and the ink-type catalyst dispersions can be easily integrated with other technologies for large-scale catalyst electrode preparation. These advantages indicate the huge potentials of this method and mineral-based cheap and abundant natural resources as catalysts in the electrochemical technologies.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials provide extraordinary opportunities for exploring phenomena arising in atomically thin crystals. Beginning with the first isolation of graphene, mechanical exfoliation has been a key to provide high-quality 2D materials but despite improvements it is still limited in yield, lateral size and contamination. Here we introduce a contamination-free, one-step and universal Au-assisted mechanical exfoliation method and demonstrate its effectiveness by isolating 40 types of single-crystalline monolayers, including elemental 2D crystals, metal-dichalcogenides, magnets and superconductors. Most of them are of millimeter-size and high-quality, as shown by transfer-free measurements of electron microscopy, photo spectroscopies and electrical transport. Large suspended 2D crystals and heterojunctions were also prepared with high-yield. Enhanced adhesion between the crystals and the substrates enables such efficient exfoliation, for which we identify a common rule that underpins a universal route for producing large-area monolayers and thus supports studies of fundamental properties and potential application of 2D materials.
Recently, there have been increasing interests in phonon thermal transport in low dimensional materials, due to the crucial importance for dissipating and managing heat in micro and nano electronic devices. Significant progresses have been achieved for one-dimensional (1D) systems both theoretically and experimentally. However, the study of heat conduction in two-dimensional (2D) systems is still in its infancy due to the limited availability of 2D materials and the technical challenges in fabricating suspended samples suitable for thermal measurements. In this review, we outline different experimental techniques and theoretical approaches for phonon thermal transport in 2D materials, discuss the problems and challenges in phonon thermal transport measurements and provide comparison between existing experimental data. Special focus will be given to the effects of the size, dimensionality, anisotropy and mode contributions in the novel 2D systems including graphene, boron nitride, MoS2, black phosphorous, silicene etc.
Although photoelectrochemical water splitting is likely to be an important and powerful tool to provide environmentally friendly hydrogen, most developments in this field have been conducted on a laboratory scale so far. In order for the technology to make a sizeable impact on the energy transition, scaled up devices made of inexpensive and earth abundant materials must be developed. In this work, we demonstrate a scalable (64 cm2 aperture area) artificial photoelectrochemical device composed of triple-junction thin-film silicon solar cells in conjunction with an electrodeposited bifunctional nickel iron molybdenum water splitting catalyst. Our device shows a solar to hydrogen efficiency of up to 4.67% (5.33% active area) without bias assistance and wire connection. Furthermore, gas separation was enabled by incorporating a membrane in a 3D printed device frame.
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