# Femtosecond Laser Microfabrication of Ti3C2T x MXene for Micro-Supercapacitor Electrodes

## TL;DR

This paper explores using femtosecond lasers to precisely create microsupercapacitor electrodes from MXene materials with minimal damage.

## Contribution

The study introduces femtosecond laser micromachining as a high-precision method for patterning Ti3C2Tx MXene films into microsupercapacitor electrodes.

## Key findings

- Low pulse counts produced microstructures with minimal redeposition and depths of 0.5–1.0 μm.
- Optimized laser parameters enabled interdigitated electrodes with an areal capacitance of 19 mF/cm².
- The ablation threshold decreased progressively with increasing pulse numbers.

## Abstract

There is growing interest in using MXene-based materials
for electronic
and energy storage applications by integrating advanced microfabrication
techniques. In this work, we investigate the femtosecond laser micromachining
of Ti3C2T
x
MXene
films to enable the direct fabrication of microsupercapacitor (MSC)
electrodes with high precision and minimal thermal damage. The influence
of pulse energy and number of pulses on the resulting microstructures
was systematically analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic
Force Microscopy, Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, and Raman
spectroscopy. Irradiation with low pulse counts (1–5 pulses
at 1010 nJ) produced localized features with depths of 0.5–1.0
μm and minimal redeposition, whereas higher pulse numbers (up
to 20,000) yielded features of ∼1.2 μm with partial material
removal and resolidified regions. Incubation analysis revealed a progressive
reduction in ablation threshold with increasing pulse number. Elemental
mapping and Raman spectra confirmed efficient material removal and
exposure of the underlying substrate. Using optimized parameters,
interdigitated electrodes were fabricated and integrated into planar
MSCs, which exhibited an areal capacitance of 19 mF/cm2 at 5 mV/s, as well as energy and power densities of 0.45 μWh/cm2 and 0.3 mW/cm2 at 1 mA/cm2, respectively.
These results demonstrate that femtosecond laser processing provides
a versatile and high-resolution approach for MXene patterning, with
strong potential for scalable microdevice fabrication in energy-related
technologies.