Multimodal Spectroscopic Study of Surface Termination Evolution in Cr<sub>2</sub>TiC<sub>2</sub>T<i><sub>x</sub></i> MXene
James L. Hart, Kanit Hantanasirisakul, Andrew C. Lang, Yuanyuan Li, Faisal Mehmood, Ruth Pachter, Anatoly I. Frenkel, Yury Gogotsi, Mitra L. Taheri
Abstract
Abstract Control of surface functionalization of MXenes holds great potential, and in particular, may lead to tuning of magnetic and electronic order in the recently reported magnetic Cr 2 TiC 2 T x . Here, vacuum annealing experiments of Cr 2 TiC 2 T x are reported with in situ electron energy loss spectroscopy and novel in situ Cr K‐edge extended energy loss fine structure analysis, which directly tracks the evolution of the MXene surface coordination environment. These in situ probes are accompanied by benchmarking synchrotron X‐ray absorption fine structure measurements and density functional theory calculations. With the etching method used here, the MXene has an initial termination chemistry of Cr 2 TiC 2 O 1.3 F 0.8 . Annealing to 600 °C results in the complete loss of F, but O termination is thermally stable up to (at least) 700 °C. These findings demonstrate thermal control of F termination in Cr 2 TiC 2 T x and offer a first step toward termination engineering this MXene for magnetic applications. Moreover, this work demonstrates high energy electron spectroscopy as a powerful approach for surface characterization in 2D materials.