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

Abstract

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.

Prospective advances in MXene inks: screen printable sediments for flexible micro-supercapacitor applications

“…The critical components of a screen printable ink required 12–20 wt% pigment, 45–65 wt% binders, 20–30 wt% solvent, and 1–5 wt% additives. At the same time, the viscosity of the ink must be between 1000 and 10 000 mPa s. 3,64 Therefore, in order to formulate the ink desirable to screen printing one should not only focus on the composition of materials, but also the performance of each individual printed component and tuning of the ink for achieving high performance must be considered. For instance, MXene sheets with high concentrations were found to cause agglomeration and eventually result in the clogging of the nozzle in printers, 58 and at a low MXene concentration the printing patter performance gets reduced due low resolution.…”

“…28 Thus, improving the ink adhesion properties by adding suitable binders and retaining the MXene nanosheet colloidal stability in the ink composition are certainly the major challenges. 3…”

“…6a). 3 An ideal ink must show shear thinning behavior, with low viscosity to generate stable ink droplets under applied stress. The intermolecular interaction and relative fluid nature of active 2DNMs in the dispersion can be observed from the elastic moduli ( G ′) and viscous moduli ( G ′′) of the dispersion as a function of frequency at a constant strain amplitude.…”

“…The micro-architecture development of electronic components on flexible substrates is increasing the demand for wearable electronics. 1–3 However, the key components required for the fabrication of wearable electronic devices are high-performance, flexible, and micro-sized energy-storage systems, in terms of either generating required power characteristics ( i.e. , high-energy-density, long cycle life, and high-rate capability) or mechanical performances ( i.e.…”

“…Therefore, screen-printing of micro-architectures for flexible micro-sized energy-storage devices like micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) has attracted a lot of interest in recent years. 2–5 The formulation of functional inks for the screen-printing of MSCs with high-performance nanomaterials in the fabrication of next-generation flexible electronic devices is necessary. In this context, conductive and semi-conductive two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials with a high surface area and unique physicochemical properties have been more focused on in the last decade as functional material inks for this purpose.…”