A non-van der Waals 2D Material from natural titanium mineral ore Ilmenite

Puthirath Balan, A., Radhakrishnan, S., Kumar, R., Neupane, R., Sinha, S.K., Deng, L., de los Reyes, C.A., Apte, A., Rao, B.M., Paulose, M., Vajtai, R., Chu, C.W., Costin, G., Marti, A.A., Varghese, O.K., Singh, A.K., Tiwary, C.S., Anantharaman, M.R., Ajayan, P.M

Chemistry of Materials  https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b01935

Abstract

Two dimensional (2D) materials from naturally occurring minerals are promising and possess interesting physical properties. A new 2D material ‘Ilmenene’ has been exfoliated from the naturally occurring titanate ore ilmenite (FeTiO3) by employing liquid phase exfoliation in dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent by ultrasonic bath sonication. Ilmenene displays [001] orientation which is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Probable charge transfer excitation from Fe2+Ti4+ to Fe3+Ti3+ results in ferromagnetic (FM) ordering along with the antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase accompanied by enhanced anisotropy due to surface spins. The 2D nature and bandgap states help ilmenene form a heterojunction photocatalyst with titania nanotube arrays, capable of broad spectrum light harvesting and separating/transferring the photo-generated charges effectively for solar photoelectrochemical water splitting.

Puthirath Balan, A., Radhakrishnan, S., Kumar, R., Neupane, R., Sinha, S.K., Deng, L., de los Reyes, C.A., Apte, A., Rao, B.M., Paulose, M., Vajtai, R., Chu, C.W., Costin, G., Marti, A.A., Varghese, O.K., Singh, A.K., Tiwary, C.S., Anantharaman, M.R., Ajayan, P.M., 2018. A non-van der Waals 2D Material from natural titanium mineral ore Ilmenite. Chem. Mater. acs.chemmater.8b01935. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b01935

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b01935