Water and ethanol used to exfoliate inorganic graphene analogues

Researchers from Lanzhou University in China managed to use water and ethanol to exfoliate inorganic graphene analogues (IGAs) from their parent material. IGAs, like graphene are single sheets of atoms in a hexagonal structure. IGAs are less stable at high temperature and they can act like doped semiconductors without actually adding any dopants.

Producing IGAs is not straightforward, but the new technology synthesizes IGAs by mixing solvents to get the combined advantages of low boiling point and good exfoliation.