A key parametric study of ultrasonic exfoliation of 2D TiB2 using DI water as a unique medium
Marghoob Ahmed,
Muhammad Aftab Akram,
Afsar Bano,
Muhammad Zafar Khan,
Rafia Rehman,
Rahim Jan,
Sofia Javed
Affiliations
Marghoob Ahmed
Department of Materials Engineering, School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
Muhammad Aftab Akram
Department of Materials Engineering, School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan; Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pak-Austria Fachhochschule Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology, Mang Haripur, 22620, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Afsar Bano
Department of Physics, Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences, LUMS, 54792, Lahore, Pakistan
Muhammad Zafar Khan
Department of Materials Engineering, School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
Rafia Rehman
Section of Phytochemistry and Natural Products, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Medical Sciences, Rawalpindi, 46000, Punjab, Pakistan
Rahim Jan
Department of Materials Engineering, School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
Sofia Javed
Department of Materials Engineering, School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan; Corresponding author.
Liquid Phase Exfoliation (LPE) is a very effective technique for the synthesis of few layered two dimensional (2D) nanosheets. There is a surge to find environment friendly solvents for efficient exfoliation of layered materials to produce 2D nanosheets. TiB2 is an important layered material with very little reported work on its 2D nanosheets. The present work is about successful LPE of TiB2 using deionized (DI) water as a clean, green and low cost dispersion medium to make TiB2 nanosheets. The impact of ultrasonication conditions i.e. input power and treatment duration for efficient synthesis of few layered 2D nanosheets in DI water is studied by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It is found that by increasing input power, the layer thickness is reduced from bulk to 34 nm with lateral dimensions as huge as up to 5 μm. The increased treatment duration has further reduced the layer thickness to 21 nm associated with a decrease in lateral dimensions to about 1 μm. The mechanism of variation in the aspect ratio of the 2D nanosheets with ultrasonication power and treatment duration is explained. The optimum conditions for the fabrication of high aspect ratio 2D nanosheets of TiB2 owe to a greater acoustic cavitation intensity, an optimum treatment duration and a homogenous distribution of the cavitation events while using an appropriate size of the sonotrode in the sonicated volume during ultrasonication.
