Ti3C2Tx MXene is a promising active material for developing fiber-based devices due to its exceptional electrical conductivity and electrochemical capacitance. However, fabricating robust fibers with high MXene content remains challenging due to shortcomings such as low interfacial adhesion between sheets and shrinkage-induced sheet disorientation during processing, leading to diminished physical and electrochemical properties. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of tough, conductive, and electrochemically active fibers through a sequential bridging (SB) strategy involving calcium cation (Ca2+) infiltration of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC)-bridged MXene, cross-linked and dried under tension. The resulting fibers exhibited a record toughness of ~2.05 MJ m-3 and retained high volumetric capacitance (~985 F cm-3), attributed to the synergistic CNC bridging, Ca2+ cross-linking, and tension application during fiber drying. These fibers also surpass the conductivity of their unaligned pristine MXene counterpart (~8,347 S cm–1 vs. ~5,078 S cm-1), ascribed to the tension-induced improvement in MXene alignment within these fibers, mitigating the undesirable effects of inserting an insulating CNC bridge. We anticipate that improving the toughness and conductivity of sequentially bridged MXene (SBM) fibres will pave the way for the production of robust multifunctional MXene fibres, allowing their use in practical high-performance applications like wearable electronics and energy storage devices.
Conductive fibers are needed for the development of flexible electronic and biomedical devices. MXene fibers show great promise for use in such applications because of their high conductivity. Current literature on MXene fiber development highlights the need for improving their mechanical properties and investigation of biocompatibility. Here the use of silk fibroin biopolymer as a MXene formulation additive for the production of MXene fibers is studied. It is found that the favorable silk fibroin–MXene interactions resulted in improved durability, withstanding up to 1 h of high frequency sonication in buffered solutions. Furthermore, fibers with ≈5 wt% silk fibroin displays interesting properties including high conductivity (≈3700 S cm−1), high volumetric capacitance (≈910 F cm−3), and non‐cytotoxicity toward THP‐1 monocytic cells. The results presented here provide an important insight into potential use of MXene fibers in flexible electronics and biomedical applications.
Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene (or "MXene" for simplicity) has gained noteworthy attention for its metal-like electrical conductivity and high electrochemical capacitance-a unique blend of properties attractive toward a wide range of applications such as energy storage, healthcare monitoring, and electromagnetic interference shielding. However, processing MXene architectures using conventional methods often deals with the presence of defects, voids, and isotropic flake arrangements, resulting in a trade-off in properties. Here, a sequential bridging (SB) strategy is reported to fabricate dense, freestanding MXene films of interconnected flakes with minimal defects, significantly enhancing its mechanical properties, specifically tensile strength (≈285 MPa) and breaking energy (≈16.1 MJ m -3 ), while retaining substantial values of electrical conductivity (≈3050 S cm -1 ) and electrochemical capacitance (≈920 F cm -3 ). This SB method first involves forming a cellulose nanocrystal-stitched MXene framework, followed by infiltration with structure-densifying calcium cations (Ca 2+ ), resulting in tough and fatigue resistant films with anisotropic, evenly spaced, and strongly interconnected flakes -properties essential for developing high-performance energy-storage devices. It is anticipated that the knowledge gained in this work will be extended toward improving the robustness and retaining the electronic properties of 2D nanomaterial-based macroarchitectures.
Back Cover: In article number 2200114, Dylan Y. Hegh, Joselito M. Razal, and co‐workers, report a sequential bridging (SB) method of fortifying MXene, leading to dense, free‐standing films of interconnected flakes, with significantly enhanced toughness and flexibility, without compromising electrical conductivity or electrochemical capacitance.
Blood apheresis technologies are crucial during blood donation and toxin removal. Current purification methods such as leukacytapheresis, erythrocytapheresis, thrombocytapheresis and plasmapheresis primarily rely on centrifugation and membrane filtration to separate...
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