Controlled Exfoliation of MoS2 Crystals into Trilayer Nanosheets

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• 作者：Xiaobin Fan ; Pengtao Xu ; Yuguang C. Li ; Dekai Zhou ; Yifan Sun ; Minh An T. Nguyen ; Mauricio Terrones ; Thomas E. Mallouk
• 刊名：Journal of the American Chemical Society
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：April 20, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：138
• 期：15
• 页码：5143-5149
• 全文大小：632K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1520-5126

文摘

The controlled exfoliation of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) into pristine single- or few-layer nanosheets remains a significant barrier to fundamental studies and device applications of TMDs. Here we report a novel strategy for exfoliating crystalline MoS₂ into suspensions of nanosheets with retention of the semiconducting 2H phase. The controlled reaction of MoS₂ with substoichiometric amounts n-butyllithium results in intercalation of the edges of the crystals, which are then readily exfoliated in a 45 vol % ethanol–water solution. Surprisingly, the resulting colloidal suspension of nanosheets was found (by electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy) to consist mostly of trilayers. The efficiency of exfoliation of the pre-intercalated sample is increased by at least 1 order of magnitude relative to the starting MoS₂ microcrystals, with a mass yield of the dispersed nanosheets of 11–15%.