Oriented edge-fluorinated molybdenum disulfide by direct gas fluorination

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has been widely employed in microelectronic devices, photoelectric detections, and lubricants. However, the poor oxidation resistance and interfacial bonding ability restrict its high-performance applications. In this work, a largely unexplored strategy by direct gas fluorination reaction is applied to rapidly fabricate high-quality fluorinated MoS₂ (FMoS₂). It has been demonstrated that the controllable fluorination is guided to solely eliminate unstable oxygen groups at the edge of MoS₂ nanosheet rather than damage intact plane structure, which thus maintains pristine crystal structure and specifically introduces stable fluorine-containing groups at the edge, significantly strengthening the oxidation resistance ability. Meanwhile, the introduced fluorine with strongest electronegativity and fluorination-induced more S-vacancies can produce strong interactions with metal atoms, thereby synergistically strengthening interfacial bonding with metal substrate. As a typical application verification, FMoS₂ exhibits obviously enhanced lubricating performances than that of pristine MoS₂ because of enhanced oxidation resistance and interfacial bonding ability, accompanied by 50.2% and 74% decrease in friction coefficient and wear rate, respectively. This work offers a direct, rapid and controllable fluorination strategy to solve the long-standing challenges in significant MoS₂ application fields, which also presents the universal potential to optimize other important two-dimensional (2D) materials toward high-performance applications at harsh environments.