Liquid
metal forms a thin layer of oxide skin via exposure to oxygen
and this layer could be exfoliated by mechanical delamination or gas-injection/solvent-dispersion.
Although the room-temperature fabrication of two-dimensional (2D)
oxide through gas-injection and water-dispersion has been successfully
demonstrated, a synthetic protocol in nonaqueous solvent at elevated
temperature still remains as a challenge. Herein we report the mass-production
of amorphous 2D SnO
x
nanoflakes with Bi
decoration from liquid Sn–Bi alloy and selected nonaqueous
solvents. The functional groups of the solvents play a key role in
determining the final morphology of the product and the hydroxyl-rich
solvents exhibit the best control toward 2D SnO
x
. The different solvent-oxide interaction that facilitates
this phase-transfer process is further discussed on the basis of DFT
calculation. Finally, the as-obtained 2D SnO
x
is evaluated in electrocatalytic CO2 reduction
with high faradaic efficiency (>90%) of formic acid and stable
performance
over 10 h.
In this paper, we developed a simple two-step route to prepare a PdO/SnO2 heterostructure with the diameter of the SnO2 and PdO nanoparticles at about 15 nm and 3 nm, respectively.
Two-dimensional (2D) oxide can be continuously produced by bubbling oxygen into liquid metals and the harvesting of these oxide relies on the proper choice of dispersion solvents. The mass-production of ligand-free 2D materials from high melting-point metals will not be possible if the limited stability of the traditional dispersion solvents is not circumvented. Herein, liquid tin was used for the first time in the bubbling protocol and 2D tin oxide was obtained in molten salts. The nanosheets were studied with combined microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, and high-density grain boundaries was identified between the sub-5-nm nano-crystallites in the nanosheets. It gives rise to the high performance in electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction reaction. Density-functional-theory based calculation was applied to achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between the activity, selectivity, and the grainboundary features. The molten-salt based protocol could be explored for the synthesis of a library of functional 2D oxides.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.