ZHANG Baolin ¹, ZHANG Chuanfang ²

(1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang, China; 2. Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), ETH Domain, Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland)

Abstract: The ever-increasing demand for electronic devices has motivated the industry to opt for new, cost-effective and high throughput manufacturing methods. Printing and coating are promising techniques with potential to meet such demands. However, so far, their progress has been limited by the lack of functional inks. MXenes, recently emerged new two-dimensional materials, could be a true game-changer, due to their outstanding chemical, electrical, optical and mechanical properties. Abundant functional groups, rich surface chemistry and exceptional colloidal stability even at very high concentrations make MXenes a perfect choice for functional ink formulation. While MXenes have been demonstrated to have excellent performance in almost all electronic devices in one way or another, their largest application field is in the energy storage devices. In this contribution, after a brief introduction on MXenes and their synthesis methods, we discuss ink formulation strategies and review some of the latest works on printing and coating of MXene-based electrochemical energy storage devices. This perspective is to shed light on the efficient fabrication of high-performance energy-storage devices based on functionalized MXene inks and provide guidelines to the processing of MXene materials.
Key words: printing; coating; ink formulation; MXene; energy storage devices