Liquid Metals-Assisted Synthesis of Scalable 2D Nanomaterials: Prospective Sediment Inks for Screen-Printed Energy Storage Applications

The advents in flexible and smart technology like wearable electronics have accelerated the demand for high-performance energy-storage devices. These devices could significantly reduce the size of the next-generation wearable smart electronics. A selection of suitable printing technology and its product typically offer a reasonable manufacturing pathway like high deposition rate, low materials waste, scalable fabrication, and high-performance production. Therefore, the production of novel functional inks with desirable rheological properties that authorize high-resolution printing, are some major challenges of this technology. This work has an emphasis on the recent advancements in supporting and utilizing liquid metals chemistry to synthesis high-quality and scalable 2D nanomaterials by liquid-phase free exfoliation and facile sonication-assisted methods. These are novel concepts in synthesizing 2D nanomaterials particularly for those which either have not intrinsic layered crystal structures or those with strong interaction between their crystal layers which are difficult to synthesized using conventional approaches. It also provides some potentials to make sustainable ink formulation of such 2D nanostructures for the fabrication of high-quality screen-printed patterns for sustainable energy applications. Subsequently, it deals with the possibilities and challenges of printing such 2D nanomaterials (namely, 2D metal oxides) for micro-supercapacitor and micro-battery applications on an industrially viable scale.