Electromagnetic characterization of MAX phase and MXene in Ti–Al–C ternary system

Abstract

The present paper set out to investigate the synthesis and electromagnetic characterization of Ti3AlC2 MAX phase and Ti3C2Tx MXene in Ti–Al–C ternary system. In this regard, Ti3AlC2 MAX phase was synthesized using mechanical milling process of TiC, Al, and Ti powder mixtures based on 2TiC–Al–Ti + xAl (x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1). The HF acidic etching was also employed to synthesize the Ti3C2Tx MXene. Structural and electromagnetic characterizations of the prepared samples were conducted using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and vector network analyzer. The obtained results point to the impossibility of the formation of Ti3AlC2 single-phase structure in stoichiometric system. In other word, development of the Ti3AlC2 single-phase structure is only possible in non-stoichiometric 2TiC–2Al–Ti system. The minimum reflection losses of the prepared Ti3AlC2 MAX phase was estimated to be around −30.73 dB at the matching frequency of 15.25 GHz. The results further revealed that the etching time affects electromagnetic behavior of the MXene. That is, an increase in the etching time brings about a change in the reflection loss (RL) from −24.17 to −5.69 dB within the frequency range of 1–18 GHz.