Solid-state surfactant templating for controlled synthesis of amorphous 2D oxide/oxyhydroxide nanosheets

As a member of 2D family, amorphous 2D nanosheets have received increasing attention due to their unique properties that are distinct from crystalline 2D nanosheets. However, compared with the vast library of crystalline 2D nanosheets, amorphous 2D nanosheets are still infancy due to the lack of an efficient synthetic approach. Here, we present a strategy that yields a library of 10 distinct amorphous 2D metal oxides/oxyhydroxides using solid-state surfactant crystals. A key feature of this process is a stepwise reaction using solid surfactant; the solid-state surfactant crystals have metal ions arranged in the interlayer space, and hydrolysis of the metal ions leads to the formation of isolated clusters in the surfactant crystals via limited condensation reactions. Immersing the surfactant crystals in formamide promotes nanosheet formation through the self-assembly of clusters by templating the morphologies of the crystals generated from surfactants crystals. Our approach opens a flatland in amorphous 2D world.