An Unexpected Transformation of Organic Solvents into 2D Fluorescent Quantum Dots during Ultrasonication-Assisted Liquid-Phase Exfoliation

Ultrasonication within organic solvents is widely used to exfoliate layered materials and produce two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures. Several 2D materials synthesized by such liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) approaches are reported to exhibit photoluminescence. In these approaches, it is presumed that while the 2D nanostructures are derived from the layered parent material undergoing delamination, the organic solvent serves as a dispersing medium. However, in this study, we show that the organic solvent also contributes toward formation of 2D nanostructures that are optically active. We show that the bare organic solvent, when exposed to ultrasonication, transforms into 2D photoluminescent carbon quantum dots (CQDs) that display blue, cyan, green, and yellow emissions depending upon the excitation wavelength. Although this finding is intuitive, it has remained unacknowledged in the design of experiments, which require ultrasonication of layered materials in organic solvents. Our results suggest that optical properties of dispersions obtained by LPE embody a contribution not only from the 2D nanostructures derived from the layered material but also from the 2D CQDs that are formed as a natural result of the liquid medium being exposed to ultrasonication. We anticipate that this new physical insight would form an important addition to the guidelines for exfoliation and help in rightly inferring the optical properties of the 2D material dispersions produced by these methods.