Simultaneous capturing phonon and electron dynamics in MXenes

Qi Zhang; Jiebo Li; Jiao Wen; Wei Li; Xin Chen; Yifan Zhang; Jingyong Sun; Xin Yan; Mingjun Hu; Guorong Wu; Kaijun Yuan; Hongbo Guo; Xueming Yang

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-35605-7

Simultaneous capturing phonon and electron dynamics in MXenes

Nat Commun. 2022 Dec 22;13(1):7900. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35605-7.

Authors

Qi Zhang¹, Jiebo Li², Jiao Wen³, Wei Li⁴, Xin Chen⁴, Yifan Zhang⁵, Jingyong Sun³, Xin Yan⁶, Mingjun Hu³, Guorong Wu¹, Kaijun Yuan^{7

8}, Hongbo Guo⁹, Xueming Yang^{1

10

11}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics and Dalian Coherent Light Source, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, P.R. China.
² Institute of Medical Photonics, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P.R. China. jiebo39@buaa.edu.cn.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P.R. China.
⁴ GuSu Laboratory of Materials, Suzhou, 215123, Jiangsu, China.
⁵ Institute of Medical Photonics, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P.R. China.
⁶ School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P. R. China.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics and Dalian Coherent Light Source, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, 116023, P.R. China. kjyuan@dicp.ac.cn.
⁸ Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, 230088, China. kjyuan@dicp.ac.cn.
⁹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P.R. China. guo.hongbo@buaa.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, 230088, China.
¹¹ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.

Abstract

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 (Ti₃C₂T_x and Mo₂CT_x). Distinctive from the well-known damping pathways, our results demonstrate a different energy damping channel, in which the Ti₃C₂T_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.