Mesoporous MXene powders synthesized by acid induced crumpling and their use as Na-ion battery anodes

Abstract

Manipulating the shapes of, otherwise flat, two-dimensional, 2D, flakes is important in many applications. Herein by simply decreasing the pH of a Ti3C2Tx MXene colloidal suspension, the 2D nanolayers crash out into crumpled flakes, resulting in randomly oriented powders, with a mesoporous architecture. Electrodes made with the latter showed capacities of 250 mAh g−1 at 20 mA g−1 in sodium-ion batteries. The rate performance, 120 mAh g−1 at 500 mA g−1, was also respectable. This acid-induced, reversible, crumpling approach is facile and scalable and could prove important in electrochemical, biological, catalytic, and environmental MXene-based applications.

Keywords

• MXenes
• crumpled nanosheets
• acid-induced crashing
• 3D mesoporous architecture
• sodium-ion battery