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Metal/MXene composites via in situ reduction

Nature Synthesis volume 4, pages 252–261 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metal/two-dimensional substrate composites offer a rich library of materials that can have application in catalysis, sensing, biotechnology and other fields. In situ reduction deposition provides a scalable method for fabricating metal/MXene composites, but the rational control of metal nanostructures growth on MXene remains difficult. Here a strategy for the in situ reduction deposition of various metals (Au, Pd, Ag, Pt, Rh, Ru and Cu) on Ti3C2Tx MXene is demonstrated. This study uncovers the guiding principles of the metal deposition process on MXene nanosheets, including the influence of redox potential, metal coordination and lattice mismatch. A series of metal/MXene composites with fine-tuned structures were constructed based on these guiding principles, such as Pd@Au-Edge/Ti3C2Tx, Pt@Au-Edge/Ti3C2Tx, Au@Ag@Au-Surface/Ti3C2Tx and Ag@Pd@Au-Edge/Ti3C2Tx. In addition, the in situ reduction strategy can be extended to other MXene materials, such as Mo2CTx, V2CTx, Ti3CNTx, Nb4C3Tx and Mo2TiC2Tx, which allows the creation of metal/MXene composites with versatile and customizable nanostructures for a wide range of applications.

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Fig. 1: A preliminary exploration of in situ reduction processes—nucleation and growth.
Fig. 2: Ti leaching during in situ reducing processes.
Fig. 3: Selectivity of the deposition site of Au.
Fig. 4: Size distribution of Pd.
Fig. 5: Summary of in situ reducing deposition processes.

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Data availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available in the article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

Q.Z. acknowledges support from Institute of Inorganic Membrane Science and Engineering (Shandong University of Technology) and Natural Science Foundation in Shandong Province (ZR2023QB007 and ZR2022QB147) and the Youth Innovation Team of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province (2023KJ147). H.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52371140, 21972093 and 21974027), Shanghai Frontiers Science Centre of Biomimetic Catalysis and the Shanghai Engineering Research Centre of Green Energy Chemical Engineering. J.-a.W. acknowledges support from the Welch Foundation (F-1841) Texas Advanced Computing Centre and the Perlmutter at the National Energy Scientific Research Center. C. Zhang acknowledges support from the Program for Eastern Young Scholars in Shanghai and Shanghai Class IV Peak Disciplinary Development Program.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Qingxiao Zhang, Jia-ao Wang, Qinghua Yu, Qizhen Li.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Resource Chemistry of Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Functional Materials, and Department of Chemistry, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Qingxiao Zhang, Runze Fan, Chong Li, Weihua Cheng, Peiyi Ji, Jie Sheng, Chenhao Zhang & Hui Li

  2. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, China

    Qingxiao Zhang, Qinghua Yu, Yiyi Fan & Cong Zhao

  3. Department of Chemistry and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Jia-ao Wang & Graeme Henkelman

  4. School of Materials, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Qizhen Li

  5. Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Songhai Xie

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  1. Qingxiao Zhang
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Contributions

H.L. conceived and supervised the research. Q.Z., Q.Y., C. Zhang and H.L. wrote and revised the paper. Q.Z., Q.Y., Y.F. and C. Zhang designed the experiments. Q.Z., Q.L. and S.X. performed most of the experiments and data analysis. Q.Z., Q.Y., C. Zhang and H.L. discussed and proposed the mechanism. J.-a.W. and Q.L. performed the theoretical calculations. Q.Z., J.-a.W., Q.Y., Q.L., R.F., C.L., Y.F., C. Zhao, W.C., P.J., J.S., C. Zhang, S.X., G.H. and H.L. participated in experiments and discusions. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to Hui Li.

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Nature Synthesis thanks Khaled A. Mahmoud and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alexandra Groves, in collaboration with the Nature Synthesis team.

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Zhang, Q., Wang, Ja., Yu, Q. et al. Metal/MXene composites via in situ reduction. Nat. Synth 4, 252–261 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-024-00660-z

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