Abstract

Cavitation assisted liquid phase exfoliation provides a scalable top down route for producing graphene and other two dimensional materials without necessarily relying on strong oxidative chemistry. This article examines the thermodynamic basis of layer separation, liquid wetting and stabilization, cavitation physics, stress transfer to layered particles, and the operating characteristics of acoustic and hydrodynamic reactors. Jet cavitation, microfluidic cavitation, rapid decompression, microfluidization, wet jet milling, rotor stator processing, and hybrid routes are evaluated together with downstream classification, concentration, drying, formulation, and quality assurance. Published evidence shows that useful exfoliation requires a controlled balance between delamination and damage. Increasing treatment severity can reduce thickness but can also decrease lateral size, increase edge density and basal plane defects, generate holes, accelerate stabilizer degradation, increase equipment wear, and reduce isolated yield. Product quality therefore cannot be defined by a single metric. Raman spectroscopy, AFM, TEM, surface chemistry, trace contamination, dispersion stability, mass balance, and application performance must be interpreted together. Scale up should preserve effective exposure, pressure recovery, residence time distribution, solids loading, thermal history, and classification conditions rather than equipment size or nominal power alone. The same framework extends to boron nitride, transition metal dichalcogenides, black phosphorus, layered oxides, MXenes, and clays. Cavitation is most effective when it is integrated into specification driven manufacturing and evaluated by reproducible mass of in specification product per unit time, energy, and process burden.