Publication date: 15th December 2025
Flux-assisted synthesis provides powerful opportunities for expanding the structural and chemical diversity of layered carbides and borides relevant to the 2D materials community. By optimising metal-flux compositions, the crystallite size of MAX and MAB phases can be increased dramatically—from sub-micron grains in conventional solid-state routes to well-faceted millimetre-scale crystals suitable for high-quality exfoliation. Beyond classical metallic fluxes, we demonstrate that transition-metal sulfide flux environments enable the direct formation of S-containing MAX phases, offering new pathways to engineer layered precursors for sulfur-rich MXenes.
Morphology control is further achieved through the use of structured carbon precursors, which direct the growth of MAX phases into anisotropic architectures such as hollow or tubular crystals. These unconventional morphologies can be subsequently exfoliated to yield MXene nanotubes, expanding the accessible geometries of 2D materials beyond the planar limit and enabling curvature-dependent surface and electronic effects.
Post-synthetic reactivity of both MAX phases and exfoliated MXenes with halogens, chalcogens, and other small atoms provides an effective route to tailor surface terminations, interlayer chemistry, and electronic structure. Such controlled functionalisation is critical for optimizing MXene performance in electrocatalytic applications, including the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions.
Together, these approaches establish a versatile synthetic toolbox for producing high-quality, structurally engineered precursors and MXenes with advanced properties for next-generation 2D material technologies.
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