Intercalation and Delamination of Layered Carbides and Carbonitrides

Intercalation and delamination of two-dimensional solids in many cases is a requisite step for exploiting their unique properties. A unique characteristic of layered materials is their ability to accommodate various ions and molecules between their layers, a phenomenon known as intercalation. Intercalation compounds of inorganic hosts have also gained renewed interest owing to their unique chemical and physical properties. The non-intercalated and intercalated MXene powders were cold pressed under a load corresponding to a stress of 0.8 GPa using a manual hydraulic pellet press. XRD patterns were recorded with a powder diffractometer using Cu Ka radiation. The supercells, subjected to isostatic external pressure of 0.1 MPa, were first relaxed by geometry optimization with no constraints allowing for all atom positions in the cell, as well as the cell parameters, to be optimized.