  The ability of different materials to display self-limiting growth has
recently attracted enormous attention due to the importance of nanoscale
materials in applications for catalysis, energy conversion, (opto)electronics,
etc. Here, we show that electrochemical deposition of palladium (Pd) between
graphene oxide (GO) sheets result in a self-limiting growth of 5 nm thin Pd
nanosheets. The self-limiting growth is found to be a consequence of strong
interaction of Pd with the confining GO sheets which results in bulk growth of
Pd being energetically unfavourable for larger thicknesses. Furthermore, we
have successfully carried out liquid exfoliation of the resulting Pd-GO
laminates to isolate Pd nanosheets and demonstrated their high efficiency in
continuous flow catalysis and electrocatalysis.
