Water-Enabled H-2 Generation from Hydrogenated Silicon Nanosheets for Efficient Anti-Inflammation

As an emerging therapeutic gas, hydrogen (H-2) 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 H-2 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 H-2 rapidly and continuously without any external energy input. Furthermore, theoretical calculations were employed to reveal the mechanism of enhanced H-2 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 H-2 production-enabled reactive oxygen species scavenging. This study provides a novel and efficient modality for nanomaterial-mediated H-2 therapy.