Simultaneous capturing phonon and electron dynamics in MXenes

Plasmonic MXenes are of particular interest, because of their unique electron and phonon structures and multiple surface plasmon effects, which are different from traditional plasmonic materials. However, to date, how electronic energy damp to lattice vibrations (phonons) in MXenes has not been unraveled. Here, we employed ultrafast broadband impulsive vibrational spectroscopy to identify the energy damping channels in MXenes (Ti(3)C(2)T(x) and Mo(2)CT(x)). Distinctive from the well-known damping pathways, our results demonstrate a different energy damping channel, in which the Ti(3)C(2)T(x) plasmonic electron energy transfers to coherent phonons by nonthermal electron mediation after Landau damping, without involving electron-electron scattering. Moreover, electrons are observed to strongly couple with A(1g) mode (~60 fs, 85–100%) and weakly couple with E(g) mode (1–2 ps, 0–15%). Our results provide new insight into the electron-phonon interaction in MXenes, which allows the design of materials enabling efficient manipulation of electron transport and energy conversion.