The secret to a perfect croissant is the layers—as many as possible, each one interspersed with butter. Similarly, a new material with promise for new applications is made of many extremely thin layers of metal, between which scientists can slip different ions for various purposes. This makes them potentially very useful for future high-tech electronics or energy storage.
Until recently, these materials—known as MXenes, pronounced “max-eens”—were as labor-intensive as good croissants made in a French bakery.
But a new breakthrough by scientists with the University of Chicago shows how to make these MXenes far more quickly and easily, with fewer toxic byproducts.
Researchers hope the discovery, published March 24 in Science, will spur new innovation and pave the way towards using MXenes in everyday electronics and devices.
Atom economy
When they were discovered in 2011, MXenes made a lot of scientists very excited. Usually, when you shave a metal like gold or titanium to create atomic-thin sheets, it stops behaving like a metal. But unusually strong chemical bonds in MXenes allow them to retain the special abilities of metal, like conducting electricity strongly.
They’re also easily customizable: “You can put ions between the layers to use them to store energy, for example,” said chemistry graduate student Di Wang, co-first author of the paper along with postdoctoral scholar Chenkun Zhou.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
