Ato­mic Layer De­po­si­ti­on For tailo­red bottom-​top growth of MAX and MXene films - ALD4MAX

Pro­ject sum­ma­ry

ALD4MAX will tack­le the de­po­si­ti­on of MAX pha­ses and MXe­nes by Ato­mic Layer De­po­si­ti­on (ALD). MAX pha­ses are ter­nary car­bi­des and ni­tri­des with spe­ci­fic stoi­chio­me­try and lay­e­red struc­tu­re which show very in­te­res­ting pro­per­ties. MXe­nes are 2D sys­tems equi­va­lent to gra­phe­ne which re­sult from the eli­mi­na­ti­on of the ele­ment ‘A’ from the MAX phase. There is no simp­le ap­proach to de­po­sit MAX pha­ses on con­ven­tio­nal sub­stra­tes; e.g. hea­ting at high tem­pe­ra­tu­res is nee­ded, which is in­via­ble in many cases. Mo­reo­ver, MXe­nes are only pre­pa­red in bulk form by che­mi­cal et­ching of the MAX phase, but the de­po­si­ti­on of in­di­vi­du­al MXene is not re­por­ted. In ALD4MAX we will take be­ne­fit of the layer-​by-layer growth cha­rac­te­ris­tic of ALD to de­po­sit MAX pha­ses and MXe­nes with high con­trol, and also ‘mixed’ MAX pha­ses by stacking dif­fe­rent types of MAX pha­ses. ALD4MAX will ge­ne­ra­te a high im­pact, since not only a new class of ma­te­ri­als will be pre­pa­red, but also new pos­si­bi­li­ties for ALD will be pro­ven.