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.
@article{arxiv.2108.13262,
title = {Glue-Assisted Grinding Exfoliation of Large-Size 2D Materials for Insulating Thermal Conduction and Large-Current-Density Hydrogen Evolution},
author = {Liusi Yang and Dashuai Wang and Minsu Liu and Heming Liu and Junyang Tan and Heyuan Zhou and Zhongyue Wang and Qiangmin Yu and Jingyun Wang and Junhao Lin and Xiaolong Zou and Ling Qiu and Hui-Ming Cheng and Bilu Liu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.13262},
year = {2021}
}