What the world doesn’t know about MXenes is a lot.
That’s about to change, because the first comprehensive book on MXenes, 2D Metal Carbides and Nitrides (MXenes): Structure, Properties and Applications is to be published this summer by Springer, co-edited by College of Engineering Distinguished University Professor Yury Gogotsi.
The book gathers all the origin material on MXene – the metallic, atomically thin two-dimensional materials discovered here at Drexel in 2011 – and summarizes research activity to date, both in the United States and in 50 countries throughout the world.
A team of experts was assembled to help write the book, each scientist or team of colleagues contributing a chapter on applications. CoE Distinguished Professor Dr. Michel W. Barsoum, of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), for example, co-authored two chapters. Dr. Christopher Li, professor of MSE, and other CoE researchers including several of Gogotsi’s PhD students, contributed to chapters, as well.
Together with co-editor Dr. Babak Anasori, now a faculty member at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Gogotsi recruited leading scientists who could write authoritatively on MXene research in fields like energy storage, electronics, electromagnetic interference shielding, the bio sciences, medicine, environmental and water treatment, sensors, and other areas. The book covers MXenes from the novel “recipe” through to the latest research.
Co-editors Babak Anasori (left) and Yury Gogotsi.
MXenes are highly conductive, durable, two-dimensional compounds originally hailed as contributive to groundbreaking advances in energy storage technology. Since their discovery, however, MXene research has branched into a fairly dazzling range of applications – so many, in fact, that announcements on emerging applications are made on a near-weekly basis.
“This is extra exciting,” said Gogotsi, who is the Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. “This is not just a book in my field. It opens an entirely new field of materials, the ones that were created here at Drexel University, to a new community of scholars. It officially announces the birth of the field of MXenes.”
When a novel material is discovered, said Gogotsi, scientists first want to know about its properties, synthesis, compositions, and structure. After that, they want to know what can be done with it – and what it can outperform.
“If the material has a future, we have to show, what are the applications? What are MXenes good for? There are some materials that have been discovered but that we never found significant applications for, and so they just remain scientific curiosities. And there are some other materials that change the way we live,” said Gogotsi.
He believes MXene will prove to be such a gamechanger. But in order to underscore that thesis, MXenes needed a primer. So when several publishers of note, including Springer – one of the largest publishers of technical literature in the world – approached Gogotsi and Anasori about producing a book, they jumped at the opportunity.
“This book officially announces the birth of the field of MXenes.”
Dr. Yury Gogotsi
“We needed to bring together a team of people to write this book that would explain how the development of this new family of materials can help electronics, help us move to an era of 5G telecommunications, create printable devices that will enable the Internet of Things and wearable internet, and how to use MXenes for harvesting and storing of renewable energy,” said Gogotsi.
Indeed, the co-editors hope the book will introduce MXene to a new group of scholars and students who have not yet begun to consider its possibilities in their own research.
“The MXenes research is booming at the moment, to the extent that no review article can cover all the topics,” said Anasori. “Yury and I wanted to create a comprehensive resource for everyone -- those who are already in the field, just joined, or are going to join -- to learn about this large family of 2D materials. We believe this is going to be an impactful, very useful book in the field.”
Copies of 2D Metal Carbides and Nitrides (MXenes): Structure, Properties and Applications are available through Springer International Publishing.