Drexel materials
researchers have taken the next step in a progression of advances they've
been making in the
invention of energy-storage materials. Their new method allows for
two-dimensional
layers of disparate elements to be stacked together. This development
will yield a
variety of new, durable materials with energy storage capabilities.
(August 14, 2015) The
scientists whose job it is to test the limits of what nature—specifically
chemistry— will allow to exist, just set up shop on some new real estate on the
Periodic Table. Using a method they invented for joining disparate elemental
layers into a stable material with uniform, predictable properties, Drexel
University researchers are testing an array of new combinations that may vastly
expand the options available to create faster, smaller, more efficient energy
storage, advanced electronics and wear-resistant materials.
Led by postdoctoral researcher Babak Anasori, PhD, a team
from Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering created the
material-making method, that can sandwich 2-D sheets of elements that otherwise
couldn’t be combined in a stable way. And they proved its effectiveness by
creating two entirely new, layered two-dimensional materials using molybdenum,
titanium and carbon.
Microscopic images
reveal the ordered configuration of Drexel's new layered MXene.
“By ‘sandwiching’ one or two atomic layers of a transition
metal like titanium, between monoatomic layers of another metal, such as
molybdenum, with carbon atoms holding them together, we discovered that a
stable material can be produced,” Anasori said. “It was impossible to produce a
2-D material having just three or four molybdenum layers in such structures,
but because we added the extra layer of titanium as a connector, we were able
to synthesize them.”
The researchers'
new method for making two-dimensional materials allows for
combining multiple
different layers of elements for the first time.
The discovery, which was recently published in the journal
ACS Nano, is significant because it represents a new way of combining elemental
materials to form the building blocks of energy storage technology—such as
batteries, capacitors and supercapacitors, as well as superstrong
composites—like the ones used in phone cases and body armor. Each new
combination of atom-thick layers presents new properties and researchers
suspect that one, or more, of these new materials will exhibit energy storage
and durability properties so disproportional to its size that it could
revolutionize technology in the future.