MXene-based sensors: Recent advances, mechanistic insights, and future pathways toward intelligent and sustainable sensing systems

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Two-dimensional MXenes provide a powerful platform for next-generation sensing owing to their metallic conductivity, tunable surface chemistry, and lamellar morphologies. This review presents updated advances in MXene synthesis, including HF-free etching routes, electrochemical, alkali, and molten-salt routes, as well as intercalation, doping, and heterostructure design strategies that tailor flake structures and surface terminations for sensing applications. We connect these materials innovations to high-performance MXene-based gas, electro/photochemical, photonic, and biosensors, emphasizing how interface engineering, via semiconductor junctions, catalytic nanoparticles, and integration with Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs)/Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs), can substantially enhance sensitivity, selectivity, and response speed. This review focuses on flexible, wearable, and self-powered MXene sensors capable of room-temperature, ultralow-power operation. The review further examines the relationships between MXene composition, surface chemistry, structural modification, and device architecture and their effects on sensing mechanisms and analytical performance. A unique contribution of this work is its unified perspective, which links MXene synthesis, surface chemistry, device architecture, and the fundamental physics governing signal generation. Finally, we evaluate sustainability considerations, noting that energy consumption dominates MXene life-cycle impacts and identify renewable-energy-driven production and reagent recycling as essential priorities. We reconcile mechanistic models with performance benchmarks and outline high-impact pathways for transitioning MXene sensors from laboratory prototypes to durable, field-ready technologies.