Creating MXene Nanomaterials Is No Longer Labor-Intensive, Could Pave the Way to More Applications in Electronics

Creating MXene, a nanomaterial, is not easy to make as it can be labor-intensive, like baking perfect croissants. However, that's no longer the case because researchers have already found a way to produce them in a more convenient way.

MXene Nanomaterials Are Now Easy to Create

Researchers from the University of Chicago found a way to make MXenes quickly and easily with fewer toxic byproducts.

Initially, the only known way to make MXenes, pronounced "max-eens," involves several intensive chemical engineering steps, including heating the mixture at 3,000°F followed by a bath in hydrofluoric acid, Phys.org reported.

Dmitri Talapin, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, joint appointee at Argonne National Laboratory, and the corresponding author on the paper, said the process was fine when making a few grams for experiments. However, it will result in a significant corrosive waste disposal issue when making large amounts of commercial products.

The new researchers discovered new chemical reactions allowing scientists to make MXenes from simple and cheap precursors without using hydrofluoric acid. The procedure only involves one step - mixing several chemicals with whichever metal you wish to create layers and heating it at 1,700°F.

It is simple, less toxic, and could pave the way for new applications, including future high-tech electronics, devices, or energy storage.

Also, the new MXenes are visually beautiful, like flowers, which makes them better for reactions because the edges are exposed and accessible for ions and molecules to move in between the metal layers.

MXenes can also be used as different metal alloys or different ion flavorings. The researchers tested the method with titanium and zirconium metals, believing the technique would work for various other combinations.

The study was published in Science on March 23.

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What Is MXene?

MXenes were discovered in 2011, and it got a lot of scientists excited due to their unique characteristics.

Usually, when metal like gold or titanium is shaved to create atomic-thin sheets, they lose their metal attributes. However, the strong chemical bonds in MXenes allow them to retain their metal abilities, like conducting electricity.

According to Nanowerk, MXenes are made from a bulk crystal called MAX. The 2D-layers materials derived from MAX or non-MAX were not expected to exist before the said discovery.

MXenes have good conductivity and volumetric capacitance due to their molecular sheets made from carbides and nitrides of transition metals like titanium.

They are also easy to customize. According to Di Wang, co-first author of the paper, along with postdoctoral scholar Chenkun Zhou, one can put ions between the layers to use them to store energy.

Aside from being good energy storage, this nanomaterial can also be applied in medicine and optoelectronics.

MXenes are very interesting because they could conceivably consist of millions of possible transition metal arrangements (like molybdenum or titanium), carbon, and nitrogen. The only trick is to find stable ones.