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Updated: Nov 18, 2025
Fabrication of Ti3C2 MXene Microelectrode Arrays for In Vivo Neural Recording
Published on: February 12, 2020
Improved synthesis of Ti3C2T MXenes resulting in exceptional electrical conductivity, high synthesis yield, and
Ali Shayesteh Zeraati1, Seyyed Alireza Mirkhani2, Pengcheng Sun3
1Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary, Canada T2N 1N4. u.sundararaj@ucalgary.ca and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Materials Research Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. pbraun@illinois.edu.
Abstract:
For the first time, an "Evaporated-Nitrogen" Minimally Intensive Layer Delamination (EN-MILD) synthesis approach is reported to synthesize exceptionally high quality MXene sheets. In the EN-MILD method, the concentrations of acids and Li-ions are continuously increased during the etching process. By implementing the EN-MILD approach, the electrical conductivity increases up to 2.4 × 104 S cm-1, which is the highest reported value to date for Ti3C2Tx MXenes (a traditional MILD approach results in a conductivity of 5.8 × 103 S cm-1). This significant improvement in electrical conductivity arises from the high quality of the synthesized MXene sheets as well as a larger flake size. The EN-MILD synthesis approach also offers high yield of delaminated single MXene layers (up to ∼60% after the first round of washing/centrifugation) and high colloidal concentrations (up to 31 mg ml-1). The working electrode prepared from free-standing MXene paper shows an exceptional capacitance of ≈490 F g-1 at 1 A g-1 in a supercapacitor, which is among the highest values reported for MXene-based supercapacitor electrodes. The exceptional electrical conductivity, high yield of delaminated MXene single layers, and high colloidal concentration of the EN-MILD approach significantly expand the applications of MXenes.
