Effect of vacancies and edges in promoting water chemisorption on titanium-based MXenes

The functionality of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) in technological applications greatly depends on their wettability. For instance, MXenes’ layer stability against degradative oxidation is notably reduced when stored in aqueous solutions, leading to the transformation into oxides. In this work, we study water adsorption on Ti-based MXenes by ab initio calculations. The energy gains for the molecular adsorption on Ti(n+1)X(n)T(2) is evaluated as a function of the termination (T = F, O, OH, mixture), the carbon/nitrogen ratio (X = C, N), the layer thickness (n) and water coverage. MXenes’ hydrophilicity tends to increase due to the presence of defects as vacancies and flake edges. We demonstrate that physical adsorption occurs through hydrogen bonding on both defect-free layers and layers containing C/N or Ti atomic vacancies, with –OH terminations providing the strongest interactions (0.40–0.65 eV). In contrast, strong water chemisorption is observed on surfaces with a single termination vacancy (0.60–1.20 eV), edges (0.75–0.85 eV), and clusters of defects (1.00–1.80 eV). We verified that the presence of undercoordinated Ti atoms on the surface is the key factor in promoting H(2)O chemisorption, i.e., the degradative oxidation. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40580-023-00364-8.