Bottom-up approaches to prepare ultrathin TiO2 nanosheets

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials are promising platforms to explore the unusual physical and chemical properties in surface chemistry, various catalysis, and devices. Most 2D materials derive from inherently layer-structured compounds through top-down exfoliation, but it is usually challenging to directly prepare ultrathin nanosheets of non-layered materials. TiO₂ contains at least 8 non-layered polymorphs, and some of them have found wide applications in heterogeneous catalysis, photocatalysis, solar cells, lithium-ion batteries, etc. In this review, we summarize typical bottom-up wet-chemistry synthetic systems of atomically thin TiO₂ nanosheets. The synthesis protocols are discussed in groups of different phases, and the growth mechanisms are classified into three approaches of strong ligand confinement, layered intermediate, and templated synthesis.