Scalable shear-exfoliation of high-quality phosphorene nanoflakes with reliable electrochemical cycleability in nano batteries

Atomically thin black phosphorus (called phosphorene) holds great promise as an alternative to graphene and other two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides as an anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, bulk black phosphorus (BP) suffers from rapid capacity fading and poor rechargeable performance. This work reports for the first time the use of in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to construct nanoscale phosphorene LIBs. This enables direct visualization of the mechanisms underlying capacity fading in thick multilayer phosphorene through real-time capture of delithiation-induced structural decomposition, which serves to reduce electrical conductivity thus causing irreversibility of the lithiated phases. We further demonstrate that few-layer-thick phosphorene successfully circumvents the structural decomposition and holds superior structural restorability, even when subject to multi-cycle lithiation/delithiation processes and concomitant huge volume expansion. This finding provides breakthrough insights into thickness-dependent lithium diffusion kinetics in phosphorene. More importantly, a scalable liquid-phase shear exfoliation route has been developed to produce high-quality ultrathin phosphorene using simple means such as a high-speed shear mixer or even a household kitchen blender with the shear rate threshold of ∼1.25 × 104 s−1. The results reported here will pave the way for industrial-scale applications of rechargeable phosphorene LIBs.