Preparation of antimonene nanosheets and their thermoelectric nanocomposites

Having high stability, carrier mobility and band gap tunability, antimonene nanosheets hold promise for thermoelectric applications. However, due to low production yield and oxidization, relevant studies have focused on theoretical prediction and numerical simulation. We herein report a liquid-phase exfoliation method with a novel solvent system of amine-terminated polyether (Jeffamine ED 2003): ethanol = 1:4 (weight ratio) for preparation of antimonene nanosheets. This method not only effectively inhibited the oxidation of antimonene nanosheets but produced a low thickness of 2.0 ± 0.5 nm; a film consisting of the nanosheets exhibited an electrical conductivity of 1800.1 ± 97.4 S/cm and a thermoelectric power factor of 118.9 ± 5.6 μW m−1 K−2. An epoxy nanocomposite film containing 99 vol% antimonene nanosheets demonstrated sufficient mechanical resilience for assembling of a thermoelectric generator. With a human body temperature gradient of 11 °C, the generator created a voltage of 0.471 mV and a current of 21.578 μA, leading to a power output of 10.16 nW. This study also investigated the lithium-ion intercalation method as a benchmark for preparation of antimonene nanosheets.