MXenes
have gained great attention in various fields because of
their fascinating properties; however, the preparation of few-layered
MXene powders is still limited by serious restacking of MXene nanosheets.
Herein, for the first time, we have demonstrated an effective ammonium
ion route to fundamentally address restacking and aggregation of the
MXene nanosheets, using a solution-phase flocculation method (NH4+ method and modified NH4+ method) for large-scale
preparation of few-layered Ti3C2T
x
MXene powders in large quantities. The as-prepared
few-layered MXene nanosheet powders show large size in the ab plane without the restacking phenomenon even at scanning
electron microscopy measurements of 400× magnification, demonstrating
the effectiveness of the proposed method. The method is also suitable
for large-scale synthesis of other few-layered MXene powders, including
Nb4C3T
x
, V2CT
x
, Nb2CT
x
, etc., providing a general approach for the preparation of
various few-layered MXene nanosheet powders, which represents a significant
result for the development of MXenes.
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