Discovering MXenes, the building blocks for future technology: an interview with Yury Gogotsi

MXenes, a large and still expanding family of 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides, provide abundant building blocks with unique properties for advancing low-dimensional materials and devices. Since their discovery in 2011, hundreds of MXene compositions have been synthesized and shown tunable electronic, optical, mechanical and electrochemical properties, leading to applications ranging from optics, optoelectronics and wireless communication to energy storage, sensing and biomedicine. In particular, the unusual interactions of MXenes with electromagnetic waves over ultraviolet, visible, infrared, terahertz and microwave ranges offer tremendous opportunities in emerging information technology and electromagnetic protection. Nowadays, after more than a decade of development, MXenes have also reached the critical stage of industrial transformation in addition to further fundamental exploration. NSR spoke to the leading inventor of MXenes-Distinguished University Professor Yury Gogotsi, the Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Endowed Chair in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, Director of the A. J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the World Academy of Ceramics, the European Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and many professional societies, the Citations Laureate in Physics by Clarivate, and recipient of numerous awards.