Logo image
Gas Protection of Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials from High-Energy Impacts
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Gas Protection of Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials from High-Energy Impacts

Tan Xing, Srikanth Mateti, Lu Hua Li, Fengxian Ma, Aijun Du, Yury Gogotsi and Ying Chen
Scientific reports, v 6(1), pp 35532-35532
19 Oct 2016
PMID: 27759051
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep35532View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials can be produced using ball milling with the help of liquid surfactants or solid exfoliation agents, as ball milling of bulk precursor materials usually produces nanosized particles because of high-energy impacts. Post-milling treatment is thus needed to purify the nanosheets. We show here that nanosheets of graphene, BN, and MoS can be produced by ball milling of their bulk crystals in the presence of ammonia or a hydrocarbon ethylene gas and the obtained nanosheets remain flat and maintain their single-crystalline structure with low defects density even after a long period of time; post-milling treatment is not needed. This study does not just demonstrate production of nanosheets using ball milling, but reveals surprising indestructible behaviour of 2D nanomaterials in ammonia or hydrocarbon gas under the high-energy impacts; in other milling atmospheres such as air, nitrogen or argon the same milling treatment produces nanosized particles. A systematic study reveals chemisorption of ammonia and hydrocarbon gases and chemical reactions occurring at defect sites, which heal the defects by saturating the dangling bonds. Density functional theory was used to understand the mechanism of mechanochemical reactions. Ball milling in ammonia or hydrocarbon is promising for mass-production of pure nanosheets.

Metrics

6 Record Views
68 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Logo image