Effect of terminal groups on the degradation stability of Ti₃C₂T MXenes

MXenes are 2D nanomaterials which have gained considerable attention from researchers since their discovery in 2011. However, the propensity of these 2D nanomaterials to degrade affects their shelf life. While many studies have focused on the external factors affecting the degradation of MXenes, the effect of internal factors such as terminal groups is not well understood. In this paper, we use -Br and -Cl terminations as model terminal groups to compare the degradation stability of MXenes. From our experiments we observe that -Br terminated ML-Ti₃C₂T degrades faster than -Cl terminated ML-Ti₃C₂T. Our study confirms that terminal groups do affect the degradation rate of Ti₃C₂T. The results suggest that the differences in bond dissociation energy of the M-X bond are responsible for variations in the degradation stability of MXenes. This model study can be generalized to compare the effect of terminal groups on the degradation stability of MXenes.