A scanning electron microscopy image reveals the beautiful shapes of tiny structures known as MXenes, which are of interest to scientists for new devices and electronics but were previously hard to create. These were grown with a new easier and less toxic method invented by chemists with the University of Chicago. For reference, the diameter of a human hair is about 50 µm. Credit: Di Wang
Until recently, producing these materials, known as MXenes , was as labor-intensive as creating a high-quality croissant in a traditional French bakery.shows how to make these MXenes far more quickly and easily, with fewer toxic byproducts., will spur new innovation and pave the way towards using MXenes in everyday electronics and devices.When they were discovered in 2011, MXenes made a lot of scientists very excited.
However, the only way we knew to make MXenes involved several intensive chemical engineering steps, including heating the mixture at 3,000°F followed by a bath in hydrofluoric“This is fine if you’re making a few grams for experiments in the laboratory, but if you wanted to make large amounts to use in commercial products, it would become a major corrosive waste disposal issue,” explained Dmitri Talapin, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the, joint...