Microwave-Driven Exfoliation of Bulk 2H-MoS<sub>2</sub> after Acetonitrile Prewetting Produces Large-Area Ultrathin Flakes with Exceptionally High Yield.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36916800.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acsnano.3c00280 and PMC identifier 10062031.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
2D materials display exciting properties in numerous fields, but the development of applications is hindered by the low yields, high processing times, and impaired quality of current exfoliation methods. In this work we have used the excellent MW absorption properties of MoS<sub>2</sub> to induce a fast heating that produces the near-instantaneous evaporation of an adsorbed, low boiling point solvent. The sudden evaporation creates an internal pressure that separates the MoS<sub>2</sub> layers with high efficiency, and these are kept separated by the action of the dispersion solvent. Our fast method (90 s) gives high yields (47% at 0.2 mg/mL, 35% at 1 mg/mL) of highly exfoliated material (90% under 4 layers), large area (up to several μm<sup>2</sup>), and excellent quality (no significant MoO<sub>3</sub> detected).