An easier way to fabricate a revolutionary 2D material

March 24 () –

Scientists at the University of Chicago have come up with a simple way to make MXenos, ultra-thin sheets capable of storing as much energy as a battery and recharging in seconds.

This new material is made of many extremely thin metal layers, between which scientists can slide different ions for various purposes. This makes them potentially very useful for future high-tech electronics or energy storage.

The researchers hope that the new, more efficient system with fewer toxic products, published in Sciencespur new innovations and pave the way for the use of MXenos in everyday electronic gadgets and gadgets.

When discovered in 2011, MXenos excited many scientists. Typically, when a metal such as gold or titanium is manipulated to create atomically thin sheets, it no longer behaves like a metal. But the unusually strong chemical bonds in MXenos they allow them to retain the special abilities of metal, such as strongly conducting electricity.

They’re also easily customizable: “You can put ions between the layers to use them to store energy, for example,” he said. it’s a statement chemistry graduate student Di Wang co-authored the paper with postdoctoral scholar Chenkun Zhou.

All these advantages could make MXenos extremely useful for building new devices, for example, to store electricity or block electromagnetic wave interference.

However, the only way we knew of to make MXenos involved several intensive chemical engineering steps, including heating the mixture to 537 degrees Celsius followed by a bath in hydrofluoric acid.

“This is fine if you’re making a few grams for experiments in the lab, but if you wanted to make larger amounts to use in commercial products, would become a major corrosive waste disposal problems,” explained Dmitri Talapin, professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago and corresponding author of the paper.

To design a more efficient and less toxic method, the team used principles of chemistry, in particular “atomic economy,” which seeks to minimize the number of atoms wasted during a reaction.

The Chicago team discovered new chemical reactions that allow scientists to make MXenos from simple and inexpensive precursors, without the use of hydrofluoric acid. It consists of a single step: mixing various chemicals with whatever metal you wish to layer, then heating the mixture to 926 degrees Celsius. “Then you open it and there they are”, Wang said.

The easier and less toxic method opens up new avenues for scientists to create and explore new varieties of MXenos for different applications, such as different metal alloys or different ion flavors. The team tested the method with titanium and zirconium metals, but they believe that the technique can be used for many other different combinations as well.

“These new MXenos are also visually beautiful,” Wang added. “They stand up like flowers, which may even make them better for reactions, because the edges are exposed and accessible for ions and molecules to move between the metal layers.” “.