Abstract

Layered double hydroxides, a rare family of anion-exchangeable functional materials with broad application prospects, have received much attention both in academic research reports and technological patents. It was recently discovered that they could be exfoliated into unilamellar nanosheets in different solvents. Especially, well-defined LDH nanosheets can be obtained through total delamination, in formamide, of large-sized crystallites prepared from homogeneous precipitation using hydrolysis agents. Bearing a positive charge at a two-dimensional molecular scale, layered double hydroxide nanosheets can be used as a model system for electrostatic layer-by-layer assembly in combination with polyanionic counterparts (polymer, DNA, oxide nanosheets, etc.) for various functional nanoarchitectures, such as lamellar aggregates, multilayer nanofilms and nanoshells.

Keywords: Chemical exfoliation, layered double hydroxides, nanosheets, self-assembly