Versatile Cutting Method for Producing Fluorescent Ultrasmall MXene Sheets

Abstract

As a recently created inorganic nanosheet material, MXene has received growing attention and has become a hotspot of intensive research. The efficient morphology control of this class of material could bring enormous possibilities for creating marvelous properties and functions; however, this type of research is very scarce. In this work, we demonstrate a general and mild approach for creating ultrasmall MXenes by simultaneous intralayer cutting and interlayer delamination. Taking the most commonly studied TiC as an illustrative example, the resulting product possessed monolayer thickness with a lateral dimension of 2-8 nm and exhibited bright and tunable fluorescence. Further, the method could also be employed to synthesize ultrasmall sheets of other MXene phases, for example, NbC or TiC. Importantly, although the strong covalent M-C bond was to some extent broken, all of the characterizations suggested that the chemical structure was composed of well-maintained host layers without observation of any serious damages, demonstrating the superior reaction efficiencies and safeties of our methods. This work may provide a facile and general approach to modulate various nanoscale materials and could further stimulate the vast applications of MXene materials in many optical-related fields.

Near-infrared light-responsive hydrogels via peroxide-decorated MXene-initiated polymerization

“…3c). 52,53 The p-Ti 3 C 2 T x nanosheets exhibit an obvious O-O peak (Fig. 3c), differing from conventional Ti 3 C 2 T x (Fig.…”

Nonoxidized MXene Quantum Dots Prepared by Microexplosion Method for Cancer Catalytic Therapy

“…[ 24 ] Figure 2i shows that the PL spectroscopy of NMQDs‐Ti 3 C 2 T x has the ubiquitous excitation‐dependent behavior of conventional 2D material‐derived quantum dots, which may be attributed to the quantum size effect or surface groups within the sample ensemble. [ 25 – 27 ] This PL feature is important for some applications. For example, NMQDs‐Ti 3 C 2 T x is cocultured with adipose‐derived stem cells (ADSCs) for multicolor imaging, and the confocal images show blue, green, and red under different excitations (Figure S10, Supporting Information).…”

Highly Enhanced Pseudocapacitive Performance of Vanadium‐Doped MXenes in Neutral Electrolytes

“…The Ti 2p 3/2 spectrum of pristine MXene ( Figure a; Table S3, Supporting Information) exhibits four peaks at 454.8, 459.2, 455.5, and 456.6 eV assigned to Ti–C, Ti–O/F, Ti 2+ , and Ti 3+ , among which Ti–O/F is the dominating Ti species (ca. 60%), caused by the long time exposure to air before the measurement . The removal of F upon V doping shifts the dominating peak from 459.2 to 458.6 eV as Ti–O species prevails.…”

“…The removal of F upon V doping shifts the dominating peak from 459.2 to 458.6 eV as Ti–O species prevails. Such elimination of Ti–F species, thus peak shift, is possible because the surface F group is a stronger electron accepter than O group . It is the O 1s spectra that show the most dramatic changes after V doping (Figure b; Table S4, Supporting Information).…”