An
increasing utilization of flexible healthcare electronics and
biomedicine-related therapeutic materials urges the development of
multifunctional wearable/flexible smart fabrics for personal therapy
and health management. However, it is currently a challenge to fabricate
multifunctional and on-body healthcare electronic devices with reliable
mechanical flexibility, excellent breathability, and self-controllable
joule heating effects. Here, we fabricate a multifunctional MXene-based
smart fabric by depositing 2D Ti3C2T
x
nanosheets onto cellulose fiber nonwoven fabric via special MXene–cellulose fiber interactions. Such
multifunctional fabrics exhibit sensitive and reversible humidity
response upon H2O-induced swelling/contraction of channels
between the MXene interlayers, enabling wearable respiration monitoring
application. Besides, it can also serve as a low-voltage thermotherapy
platform due to its fast and stable electro-thermal response. Interestingly,
water molecular extraction induces electrical response upon heating, i.e., functioning as a temperature alarm, which allows for
real-time temperature monitoring for thermotherapy platform without
low-temperature burn risk. Furthermore, metal-like conductivity of
MXene renders the fabric an excellent Joule heating effect, which
can moderately kill bacteria surrounding the wound in bacteria-infected
wound healing therapy. This work introduces a multifunctional smart
flexible fabric suitable for next-generation wearable electronic devices
for mobile healthcare and personal medical therapy.
Macroscopically three-dimensional structural materials endow composite phase change materials with enhanced comprehensive performance, including excellent shape stability, high thermal conductivity and efficient energy conversion.
As a renewable and environment-friendly technology for seawater desalination and wastewater purification, solar energy triggered steam generation is attractive to address the long-standing global water scarcity issues. However, practical utilization of solar energy for steam generation is severely restricted by the complex synthesis, low energy conversion efficiency, insufficient solar spectrum absorption and water extraction capability of state-of-the-art technologies. Here, for the first time, we report a facile strategy to realize hydrogen bond induced self-assembly of a polydopamine (PDA)@MXene microsphere photothermal layer for synergistically achieving wide-spectrum and highly efficient solar absorption capability (~ 96% in a wide solar spectrum range of 250-1,500 nm wavelength). Moreover, such a system renders fast water transport and vapor escaping due to the intrinsically hydrophilic nature of both MXene and PDA, as well as the interspacing between core-shell microspheres. The solar-to-vapor conversion efficiencies under the solar illumination of 1 sun and 4 sun are as high as 85.2% and 93.6%, respectively. Besides, the PDA@MXene photothermal layer renders the system durable mechanical properties, allowing producing clean water from seawater with the salt rejection rate beyond 99%. Furthermore, stable light absorption performance can be achieved and well maintained due to the formation of ternary TiO 2 /C/MXene complex caused by oxidative degradation of MXene. Therefore, this work proposes an attractive MXene-assisted strategy for fabricating high performance photothermal composites for advanced solar-driven seawater desalination applications.
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