Dr. Vadym Mochalin, associate professor of chemistry and Shuohan Huang, an S&T doctoral student in chemistry, teamed up with researchers from Worchester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, the University of Alberta in Canada, and Universitat Bielefeld in Germany to develop 2-D MXene materials for 6G communications.

The team’s most recent results, published in the Dec. 11 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters opens up a new area of MXene applications for 6G terahertz (THz) communication technologies.

The paper, “Dynamical Control over Terahertz Electromagnetic Interference Shielding with 2D Ti₃C₂T_y MXene by Ultrafast Optical Pulses,” reports on modulation of MXene transparency in THz range in response to ultrafast visible light pulses. This unique property of thin MXene films produced at Missouri S&T is key for developing switchable electromagnetic interference shielding materials and devices that can be rendered partially transparent on demand for transmitting THz signals, or for designing new THz devices such as sensitive optically gated detectors.