## 1 Introduction  
The MAX phases are a family of advanced ceramic materials comprised of hexagonal layered transition metal carbides, nitrides, and carbonitrides, which have been explored for more than a decade [1, 2]. Generally, the MAX phases are denoted as M\({}_{n+1}\)AX\({}_{n}\), where M is an early transition metal (Sc, V, Ti, etc. ), A is an element from group 13-16, and X is either nitrogen or carbon with a stoichiometry of \(n=1,2,3\)[3]. The crystal structure of the MAX phases contains a hexagonal lattice with space group P63/mmc in which adjacent M\({}_{n+1}\)X\({}_{n}\) octahedral sites are interleaved with atomic monolayers of A atoms [4]. The MAX phases have been given considerable attention owing to their unique and interesting combination of metallic as well as ceramic properties [5]. Because of their metallic character, MAX phases exhibit high thermal and electrical conductivity along with thermal shock resistance. The ceramic property of the MAX phase material enables it to possess remarkable oxidation and corrosion resistance at high temperature operations [6]. Owing to their fascinating properties, more than 155 MAX phases have currently been synthesized [5]. Among the numerous MAX phases, ternary MAX phases based on the Ti-Al-N system are more demanding because of their oxidation resistance at high temperatures [4, 7]. The synthesis of bulk Ti\({}_{2}\)AlN in a single phase is difficult owing to its strong chemical bonding [8] and low stability [9], which provides an opportunity to investigate and explore different methods for the synthesis of Ti\({}_{2}\)AlN MAX phase. Thus, the bulk Ti\({}_{2}\)AlN MAX phase had been synthesized via multiple methods. The spectrum of these methods is broad and includes high-temperature synthesis [10, 11, 12, 13], molten salt synthesis [14, 15, 16], hot isostatic pressing (HIP) [17, 18, 19], hot pressing (HP) [20, 21, 22], field assisted sintering technology (FAST) [6], spark plasma sintering (SPS) [4, 6, 23, 24], ultra-high vacuum (UHV) deposition chamber reactive magnetron sputtering [1], microwave sintering [2], and shock-activated reaction synthesis [25]. As MAX phases possess both ceramic and metallic properties, their synthesis at low temperatures is difficult. Previous studies have reported the presence of significant amounts of impurities such as TiN, Ti\({}_{3}\)Al, TiAl, AlN, Al\({}_{2}\)Ti, and Al\({}_{3}\)Ti [2, 15, 21] during the synthesis of MAX phases at temperatures lower than 1400-1500 \({}^{\circ}\)C. Thus, most of the previous methods for synthesizing Ti\({}_{2}\)AlN require a high temperature, which entailsmuch more investment and is not easily available in common laboratories. One of the main hindrances to synthesizing MAX phase materials is the use of an expensive apparatus because commonly available furnaces have temperature limitations and can only be used at temperatures of 1100-1200 \({}^{\circ}\)C or less. Thus, there is always a strong demand for new, easily accessible, simple, and low-cost methods for the synthesis of Ti\({}_{2}\)AlN MAX phases with better crystal quality and lower temperature (\(\sim\)1100 \({}^{\circ}\)C) systems compared to the methods described in previous works. The ternary MAX phase can be easily converted into two-dimensional (2D) layered MXene sheets using a simple wet chemical etching process [10] and can be further reduced to zero-dimensional MXene quantum dots (MQDs) [26]. Similar to 2D materials such as graphene [27] and transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD)-based quantum dots [28; 29; 30], MQDs have become a center of interest for many researchers because of their excellent properties, such as good light emission [31; 32], selective metal ion sensing [33; 34; 35; 36], non-toxicity [26; 37; 38], biocompatibility [26], hydrophilicity [35], and functionalization [39; 40]. Owing to their interesting optical properties, they can be used as crucial materials in optical sensors [41; 42], bio-imaging [34], optical modulator [43] etc.