Highly aligned Ti3C2Tx MXene films with high anisotropic thermal conductivity
8 affiliations
- 1Energy2Devices, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM), CSIC Madrid 28049 Spain
- 2Center for Phononics and Thermal Energy Science, China-EU Joint Center for Nanophononics, School of Physics Science and Engineering, Tongji University 200092 Shanghai China
- 3Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” Athens Agia Paraskevi 15341 Greece
- 4University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Laboratory for Refrigeration and District Energy Askerceva 6 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia
- 5Departamento de Tecnología Electrónica, Escuela de Ingenierías Industriales, Universidad de Málaga 29071, Málaga Spain
- 6Instituto Universitario de Materiales y Nanotecnología, IMANA, Universidad de Málaga 29071, Málaga Spain
- 7Departamento de Física Aplicada I, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Málaga 29071, Málaga Spain
- 8Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University of Twente Enschede Netherlands
Abstract
High-density integration in modern electronic components induces severe heat accumulation, compromising operational stability and device longevity. Traditional metallic thermal conductors are heavily restricted by their substantial mass density and poor mechanical processability in lightweight electronics, demanding anisotropic materials that can provide robust thermal insulation across the out-of-plane direction while facilitating rapid heat dissipation along the in-plane direction. Here, we fabricate scalable and highly aligned Ti3C2Tx MXene films using the minimally intensive layer delamination method followed by vacuum-assisted filtration. Employing frequency-domain thermoreflectance, we achieve a precise characterization of directional heat transport on identical samples, revealing an exceptional thermal anisotropy ratio of 85. The fabricated films exhibit a significantly suppressed room-temperature out-of-plane thermal conductivity of 0.54 ± 0.09 W m−1 K−1 and an in-plane thermal conductivity of 46 ± 6 W m−1 K−1. Temperature-dependent characterization shows that out-of-plane thermal conductivity exhibits a positive temperature coefficient up to 353 K before stabilizing into a saturation plateau near 373 K, confirming that cross-plane heat transport is fundamentally regulated by the dense interlayer physical boundaries. At the microscopic interface, surface hydroxyl groups and interfacial hydrogen-bonding networks may modify local inter-flake phonon transport channels. The in-plane thermal conductivity decreases overall with increasing temperature, reducing the anisotropy while preserving substantial directional contrast. This work provides a versatile and high-performance platform for implementing structurally oriented MXene assemblies in advanced directional thermal management.
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BibTeX
@article{chen2026highly,
title = {{Highly aligned Ti3C2Tx MXene films with high anisotropic thermal conductivity}},
author = {Wenkang Chen and Mauro Ramos Jimenez and Kai Xu and Maria-Anna Moustaka and Katja Klinar and Diego Collado Ramos and Xiangfan Xu and Jorge Rodríguez-Moreno and Elena Navarrete-Astorga and Alexandros El Sachat and Javier Pérez Carvajal and Miguel Muñoz Rojo},
journal = {Nanoscale},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1039/d6nr02529c},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1039/d6nr02529c},
note = {CC BY 3.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Highly aligned Ti3C2Tx MXene films with high anisotropic thermal conductivity
AU - Wenkang Chen
AU - Mauro Ramos Jimenez
AU - Kai Xu
AU - Maria-Anna Moustaka
AU - Katja Klinar
AU - Diego Collado Ramos
AU - Xiangfan Xu
AU - Jorge Rodríguez-Moreno
AU - Elena Navarrete-Astorga
AU - Alexandros El Sachat
AU - Javier Pérez Carvajal
AU - Miguel Muñoz Rojo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
JO - Nanoscale
DO - 10.1039/d6nr02529c
UR - https://doi.org/10.1039/d6nr02529c
AB - High-density integration in modern electronic components induces severe heat accumulation, compromising operational stability and device longevity. Traditional metallic thermal conductors are heavily restricted by their substantial mass density and poor mechanical processability in lightweight electronics, demanding anisotropic materials that can provide robust thermal insulation across the out-of-plane direction while facilitating rapid heat dissipation along the in-plane direction. Here, we fabricate scalable and highly aligned Ti3C2Tx MXene films using the minimally intensive layer delamination method followed by vacuum-assisted filtration. Employing frequency-domain thermoreflectance, we achieve a precise characterization of directional heat transport on identical samples, revealing an exceptional thermal anisotropy ratio of 85. The fabricated films exhibit a significantly suppressed room-temperature out-of-plane thermal conductivity of 0.54 ± 0.09 W m−1 K−1 and an in-plane thermal conductivity of 46 ± 6 W m−1 K−1. Temperature-dependent characterization shows that out-of-plane thermal conductivity exhibits a positive temperature coefficient up to 353 K before stabilizing into a saturation plateau near 373 K, confirming that cross-plane heat transport is fundamentally regulated by the dense interlayer physical boundaries. At the microscopic interface, surface hydroxyl groups and interfacial hydrogen-bonding networks may modify local inter-flake phonon transport channels. The in-plane thermal conductivity decreases overall with increasing temperature, reducing the anisotropy while preserving substantial directional contrast. This work provides a versatile and high-performance platform for implementing structurally oriented MXene assemblies in advanced directional thermal management.
SN - 2040-3364
SN - 2040-3372
ER -