Manufacturing and applications of multi-functional holey two-dimensional nanomaterials – A review

Recent research on holey 2D nanomaterials has embarked a new field in nanomaterial science and engineering. The versatility of physics and chemical properties of this group of materials opens up larger improvement spaces for the development of various applications involving energy storage and transfer, electronics, electrochemical catalysis, biochemical sensing, molecular separation, and among many others. To obtain the holey 2D nanomaterials, researchers have proposed many effective methods including oxidative etching, catalyzed etching, replacement etching, high-energy impact, lithography, templated assembly, decomposition, and bottom-up synthesis. To help understanding and further promoting the advance of this area, this review focuses on two main topics: i) demonstrating the advantages of a variety of holey 2D nanomaterials and their improvements in a broad range of applications; ii) summarizing and comparing various manufacturing approaches of the holey 2D nanomaterials and the corresponding mechanisms. In the end, this paper discusses the future development of holey 2D nanomaterials and analyzes the challenges and remaining issues with the expectation to provide effective insights in this area and inspire new ideas and conceptions for the researchers from different areas.