Hydrogen Bond Interaction Promotes Flash Energy Transport at MXene-water Interface

Abstract

There are emerging applications for photothermal conversion utilizing MXene, but the mechanism under these applications related interfacial energy migration from MXene to the attached surface layer is still unknown. In this paper, with comprehensive ultrafast studies, we reported the energy migration pathway from MXene (Ti3C2Tx) to local environment under plasmonic excitation. Our data found that in water, energy dissipation is divided into fast hydrogen bond mediated channel and slow lattice motion mediated channel.The experimental results suggest that in water, nearly 80% energy in MXene that gained from the photoexcitation quickly dissipates into surrounding water molecules within 7 ps as a hydrogen bond mediated fast channel, and the remaining energy vanishes with time constant ~100 ps as a lattice motion mediated slow channel. The fast energy migration would result in the prominent interfacial energy conductance 150-300 MW *m{-2}* K{-1} for MXene-water interface. Tuning the solvent into ethanol could both narrow the energy dissipation to 35% through the fast channel and slow down the thermal channel (400 ps). To gain the molecular insight, molecular dynamic results presented different solvents had significantly different H bond forming ability on MXene surface. Our results suggested that interfacial interaction is crucial for effective hydrogen bonds on MXene surface to channel the excitation dissipation, providing important insights into the photothermal applications with MXene.