Chemists cram record nine metals into trendy 2D material

Twitter Facebook Email 2D materials called MXenes (coloured particle shown here in scanning electron micrograph) contain several layers of metals and carbons or nitrogen atoms. Credit: Devynn Leatherman-May, Brian C. Wyatt, and Babak Anasori, Purdue University Chemists have doubled the members of a family of buzzy 2D materials, and even jammed a record nine metals into one of them. The feat, published today in Science1, has excited researchers because it opens the door to designing a multitude of weird but useful substances.Meet goldene: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thickThe materials are so complex that, at this point, its impossible to simulate them with computer models, says Max Hamedi, a physicist at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Scientists will need to test their properties in the laboratory, he adds a tantalizing prospect. Maybe we will get some properties that are very surprising and that we couldnt predict.The newly expanded family of materials, called MXenes (pronounced max-eens), has previously caused a stir because their high electrical conductivity and other characteristics suggest that they might one day be used in technologies such as next-generation batteries and coatings that protect against electromagnetic interference. Not only that, these materials can be dispersed in water, so they can be sprayed or painted onto surfaces.Snazzy sandwichesThe first MXene ever synthesized, a 2D sheet of titanium carbide, was reported in 20112 by a team co-led by Yury Gogotsi, a nanomaterials scientist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Unlike the iconic 2D material graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms, MXenes contain several layers of metal and carbon or nitrogen atoms. *Reporting by Nature.*