The large and rapidly growing family of 2D early transition metal carbides, nitrides, and carbonitrides (MXenes) raises significant interest in the materials science and chemistry of materials communities. Discovered a little more than a decade ago, MXenes have already demonstrated outstanding potential in various applications ranging from energy storage to biology and medicine. The past two years have witnessed increased experimental and theoretical efforts toward studying MXenes’ mechanical and tribological properties when used as lubricant additives, reinforcement phases in composites, or solid lubricant coatings. Although research on the understanding of the friction and wear performance of MXenes under dry and lubricated conditions is still in its early stages, it has experienced rapid growth due to the excellent mechanical properties and chemical reactivities offered by MXenes that make them adaptable to being combined with other materials, thus boosting their tribological performance. In this perspective, the most promising results in the area of MXene tribology are summarized, future important problems to be pursued further are outlined, and methodological recommendations that could be useful for experts as well as newcomers to MXenes research, in particular, to the emerging area of MXene tribology, are provided.

We derive a connection between the intrinsic tribological properties and the electronic properties of a solid interface. In particular, we show that the adhesion and frictional forces are dictated by the electronic charge redistribution occurring due to the relative displacements of the two surfaces in contact. We define a figure of merit to quantify such a charge redistribution and show that simple functional relations hold for a wide series of interactions including metallic, covalent, and physical bonds. This suggests unconventional ways of measuring friction by recording the evolution of the interfacial electronic charge during sliding. Finally, we explain that the key mechanism to reduce adhesive friction is to inhibit the charge flow at the interface and provide examples of this mechanism in common lubricant additives.

We derive an analytical expression that describes the interaction energy between two graphene layers identically oriented as a function of the relative lateral and vertical positions, in excellent agreement with first principles calculations. Thanks to its formal simplicity, the proposed model allows for an immediate interpretation of the interactions, in particular of the potential corrugation. This last quantity plays a crucial role in determining the intrinsic resistance to interlayer sliding and its increase upon compression influences the frictional behavior under load. We show that, for these weakly adherent layers, the corrugation possesses the same nature and z dependence of Pauli repulsion. We investigate the microscopic origin of these phenomena by analyzing the electronic charge distribution: We observe a pressure-induced charge transfer from the interlayer region toward the near-layer regions, with a much more consistent depletion of charge occurring for the AA stacking than for the AB stacking of the two layers.