Exploring Feedstock Recycling in Liquid-Phase-Exfoliated Nanosheets

Industrial scale-up of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial production is essential if these novel materials are to prove themselves commercially viable for applications ranging from energy conversion and storage to optoelectronic devices and clean water. There are several techniques to produce 2D materials, and liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) is one that has emerged as the most widespread across laboratory, pilot, and industrial production scales. One of the main issues faced in the scale-up of such techniques is the low yield (typically 0.5-5 wt %), resulting in high levels of wasted feedstock material. Similarly, every 10 kg of product can create 1000 L or more of solvent waste, many of which are highly toxic to the environment (e.g., NMP). Using MoS