Water-Enabled H₂ Generation from Hydrogenated Silicon Nanosheets for Efficient Anti-Inflammation

Abstract

As an emerging therapeutic gas, hydrogen (H₂) is gifted with excellent biosafety, high tissue permeability, and radical-trapping capacity and is extensively considered as a highly promising antioxidant in clinics. However, a facile and effective strategy of H₂ production for major inflammatory disease treatments is still lacking. In this study, by a facile wet-chemical exfoliation synthesis, a hydrogen-terminated silicon nanosheet (H-silicene) has been synthesized, which can favorably react with environmental water to generate H₂ rapidly and continuously without any external energy input. Furthermore, theoretical calculations were employed to reveal the mechanism of enhanced H₂ generation efficacy of H-silicene nanosheets. The as-synthesized H-silicene has been explored as a flexible hydrogen gas generator for efficient antioxidative stress application for the first time, which highlights a promising prospect of this two-dimensional H-silicene nanomaterial for acute inflammatory treatments by on-demand H₂ production-enabled reactive oxygen species scavenging. This study provides a novel and efficient modality for nanomaterial-mediated H₂ therapy.