Synthesis of 2D materials: from top down to bottom up approaches

Abstract

There has been an explosion of interest in the properties of graphene since it was first isolated by mechanical exfoliation in 2004 and it is currently the most famous two-dimensional (2D) material. Since then, the research community made strong efforts in order to isolate and produce high quality graphene sheets with mass scalable techniques. Amongst all techniques for production of graphene, Liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) offers a low cost and scalable route towards the production of graphene based on the top-down exfoliation of graphite. The same technique can be extended to other layered bulk crystals, which can be then isolated in single and few-layers. In addition, LPE demonstrates the ability to exfoliate non-layered materials which were believed to not yield 2D nanoplatelets. However, this process is limited to those non-layered crystals that possess certain atomic planes which are less strongly bonded than others. Hence, alternative techniques are currently investigated for the synthesis of a wide range of 2D materials, layered and non-layered, based on bottom up approach.

Date of Award	31 Aug 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Cinzia Casiraghi (Supervisor)