Porous two-dimensional materials for energy applications: Innovations and challenges

Due to their unique structure and properties as well as promising applications, porous two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene, boron nitride, metal chalcogenides, carbon nitride, and metal oxides, have attracted extensive attention in the past few years. Combining the advantages of both 2D materials and porous structure, the fabricated porous 2D materials have presented the features of large surface areas, diversified compositions, and enhanced electronic conductivity, which endow them high potentials to act as defining components in high-performance electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices, such as lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells. In this review, we demonstrated the fabrication of various porous 2D materials by using several typical techniques like surface treatment, self-assembly, vacuum filtration, template-based, and template-free synthesis. In another way, their potential applications in energy sciences and the main challenges were introduced and discussed. It is expected that this work will be helpful for understanding the effects of material structure on its electrochemical performances in one way, and in another way will guide the design and fabrication of novel porous 2D structured materials for energy, electronic, and biomaterial applications. (c) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.