Conductors with high conductivity and stretchability are the crucial components of smart wearable electronics. However, most of the reported conductors have disadvantages of single function, high energy consumption, which seriously limit their application in wearable electronics. Here, a kind of stretchable (up to 373%), highly conductive (the same order of magnitude as commercial metal wire), and multifunctional sheath‐core fibers based on liquid metal that can be continuously fabricated in large quantity through a coaxial wet‐spinning process are reported. The simple preparation method of the fibers can realize continuous and mass production (1 m min–1 in the laboratory). When the fibers are used as an electric heater, the temperature can reach 58 °C at 0.6 V and the heating rate is obviously faster than the ambient temperature under infrared light. When the fibers are used as a wearable sensor, the tiny force of 0.001 cN can be detected and objects at less than 40 cm can be detected without contact. The stretchable fibers with high electric conductivity may provide strong supports for the commercialization of wearable electronics and pave the way toward full‐fledged multifunctional wearable sensors.
Worldwide, 45 million tons of waste cotton textiles are produced annually, of which 75% is burned and buried, leading to serious environmental pollution. In this study, a method for directly preparing colored regenerated cellulose fibers (CRCFs) from dyeing cotton textile waste (DCTW) was demonstrated. The tensile strength of CRCFs reached 226 MPa, which was equivalent to that of commercial viscose fibers. CRCFs exhibited excellent color fastness and hydrophilicity. In addition, CRCFs can be reprocessed into secondary CRCFs. The tensile strength of secondary CRCFs was 14.64% less than that of the primary CRCFs due to the reduction in the polymerization degree of secondary CRCFs; However, it also can be woven into fabrics. The exploration of the secondary utilization of CRCFs provides an experimental basis for prolonging the service life of DCTW. This approach of preparing CRCFs achieves closed-loop recycling of waste colored cellulose textiles and prevents environmental pollution caused by decoloring and dyeing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.