High electrical conductivity and breakdown current density of individual monolayer Ti3C2Tx MXene flakes

Summary As the scaling down of integrated circuits continues, there is a growing interest in electrically conductive materials with high current-carrying capacity for next-generation on-chip interconnects. Here, we report very high breakdown current density in Ti3C2Tx MXene, an emerging two-dimensional material. We performed electrical measurements of individual high-quality monolayer Ti3C2Tx flakes, which were prepared by an improved synthesis method, and found that they exhibit electrical conductivities of up to 11,000 S cm−1 and field-effect electron mobilities of up to 6 cm2 V−1 s−1, both representing the best values reported for Ti3C2Tx flakes so far. All flakes exhibited very similar breakdown current densities of about 1.2 × 108 A cm−2, which are comparable with the best two-dimensional materials, including graphene. The remarkable combination of high electrical conductivity and high current-carrying capacity makes Ti3C2Tx promising for nanometer-thin interconnects and warrants investigation of breakdown current densities of other materials from the large MXene family.