“Definitely one of the best days in my scientific career – to be the first author of an article in such a prestigious journal!” – said Paweł Michałowski, Ph.D., researcher from Łukasiewicz – IMiF. What did he mean by this? Well, everyone can learn now, that he, his team and other co-authors of an article published in Nature Nanotechnology have proved that MXenes is… oxycarbide!
Here’s a small teaser:
“MXenes have shown properties that make them attractive for applications, ranging from energy storage to electronics and medicine. Although this compositional variability allows fine-tuning of the MXenes properties, it also creates challenges during the analysis of MXenes, due to the presence of multiple light elements (for example, H, C, N, O, and F) in close proximity. Here, we show in-depth profiling of single MXenes particles and their parent MAX phases with atomic resolution using ultralow-energy secondary-ion mass spectrometry. We directly detect oxygen in the carbon sublattice, thereby demonstrating the existence of oxycarbide MXenes.”