Citation

Xiongwei Wang, and Peiyi Wu*. Aqueous Phase Exfoliation of Two-Dimensional Materials Assisted by Thermo-Responsive Polymeric Ionic Liquid and Their Applications in Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogel and Highly Thermally Conductive Film. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2018, 10 , 2504-2514.

Abstract

With the increasing attention for various two-dimensional (2D) materials in recent years, developing a universal, facile and eco-friendly method to exfoliate them into single- and few-layered nanosheets is becoming more and more urgent. Herein, we use thermo-responsive polymeric ionic liquid (TRPIL) as a universal polymer surfactant to assist the high-efficiency exfoliation of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) in aqueous medium through consecutive sonication. In this case, the reliable interaction between 2D materials and TRPIL would facilitate the exfoliation and simultaneously achieve the non-covalent functionalization of exfoliated nanosheets. Interestingly, the dispersion stability of exfoliated nanosheet suspensions can be reversibly tuned by the temperature due to the thermo-responsive phase transition behavior of TRPIL. As a proof of potential applications, a temperature and photo dual-responsive TRPIL/MoS2 coloring hydrogel with robust mechanical property and an artificial nacre-like BN nanosheet (BNNS) film with high thermal conductivity were fabricated.