Microscale Curling and Alignment of Ti₃C₂T_x MXene by Confining Aerosol Droplets for Planar Micro-Supercapacitors

Abstract

Additive manufacturing techniques have revolutionized the field of fabricating micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) with a high degree of pattern and geometry flexibility. However, traditional additive manufacturing processes are based on the functionality of microstructural modulation, which is essential for device performance. Herein, Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene was chosen to report a convenient aerosol jet printing (AJP) process for the in situ curling and alignment of MXene nanosheets. The aerosol droplet provides a microscale regime for curling MXene monolayers while their alignment is performed by the as-generated directional stress derived from the quasi-conical fiber array (CFA)-guided parallel droplet flow. Interdigital microelectrodes were further developed with the curled MXene and a satisfying areal capacitance performance has been demonstrated. Importantly, the AJP technique holds promise for revolutionizing additive manufacturing techniques for fabricating future smart microelectronics and devices not only in the microscale but also in the nanoscale.

3D Networks of Silver Nanorod–Nanoparticle Hybrids via Aerosol Jetting Printing for Flexible Electrode

“…AJP has been considered as a powerful additive manufacturing (AM) process with merits of small feature size (≈10 μm), wide viscosity range (1–1000 cP), and various material applicability. [ 47,48 ] During the AJP process, the aerosol droplets loading with solutes generated via atomization are transferred to the nozzle and thereafter are confined in the sheath gas out of the nozzle, forming a similar microfluidic process for well‐defined shaping the aerosol droplets on the substrate. [ 49 ] Meanwhile, the microscale aerosol droplets are expected to act as an optimal microreactor for mediating the formation of nanostructures, which has been verified in different aerosol processes reported previously.…”

Aerosol Jet Printing of Hybrid Ti3C2Tx/C Nanospheres for Planar Micro-supercapacitors

“…As the evaporation progresses, the liquid/ solid/gas three phase contact line (TCL) gradually recedes. The transmitting Ti 3 C 2 T x /C are easily precipitated on the substrate surface at the edge and further shaped along the droplet surface during solvent evaporation to form a spherical structure with eccentric features by referring velocity field analysis of sessile water droplets on heat substrate, although Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene is generally resistant to bending due to high bending rigidity (Wu et al, 2021). The bending of Ti 3 C 2 T x nanosheets are expected to be triggered by the sonication for the aerosol droplets generation with stress inequality, which has been evidenced during the synthesis of graphene nanoscrolls previously reported (Savoskin et al, 2007).…”

“…Aerosol jet printing (AJP) is a new type of additive manufacturing technology with industrialization prospects. As a non-contact, programmable, and versatile printing technique, the feature size of AJP could reach ~10 μm (Secor, 2018;Wu et al, 2021), implying the potential for precise preparation of individualized, batched, and miniaturized devices (Mahajan et al, 2013;Jabari and Toyserkani, 2015;Deiner and Reitz, 2017). Currently, AJP has been applied in the fabrication of integrated circuits (Skarzynski et al, 2021), transistors (Cao et al, 2017), memristor (Feng et al, 2019), ring oscillators (Ha et al, 2013), etc.…”