Intercalation assisted liquid phase production of disulfide zirconium nanosheets for efficient electrocatalytic dinitrogen reduction to ammonia

Disulfide zirconium (ZrS 2 ) is a two-dimensional (2D) transition metal disulfide and has given rise to extensive attention because of its distinctive electronic structure and properties. However, mass production of high quality of ZrS 2 nanosheets to realize their practical application remains a challenge. Here, we have successfully exfoliated the bulk ZrS 2 powder with the thickness of micron into single and few-layer nanosheets through liquid-phase exfoliation in N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) assisted via aliphatic amines as intercalators. It is found that the exfoliation yield is as high as 27.3%, which is the record value for the exfoliation of ZrS 2 nanosheets from bulk ZrS 2 powder, and 77.1% of ZrS 2 nanosheets are 2–3 layers. The molecular geometric size and aliphatic amine basicity have important impact on the exfoliation. Furthermore, the ZrS 2 nanosheets have been used as catalyst in the electrocatalytic dinitrogen reduction with the NH 3 yield of 57.75 μg h −1 mg cat. −1 , which is twice that by ZrS 2 nanofibers reported in literature and three times that by the bulk ZrS 2 powder. Therefore, the liquid phase exfoliation strategy reported here has great potential in mass production of ZrS 2 nanosheets for high activity electrocatalysis.