Robust Silk Fibroin/Graphene Oxide Aerogel Fiber for Radiative Heating Textiles

Abstract

Aerogel fibers with ultrahigh porosity and ultralow density are promising candidates for personal thermal management to reduce the energy waste of heating an entire room, and play important roles in reducing energy waste in general. However, aerogel fibers generally suffer from poor mechanical properties and complicated preparation processes. Herein, we demonstrate hierarchically porous and continuous silk fibroin/graphene oxide aerogel fibers (SF/GO) with high strength, excellent radiative heating performance, and thermal insulation performance through coaxial wet spinning and freeze-drying. The hollow CA/PAA fibers prepared via a coaxial wet spinning process have multiscale porous structures, which are not only beneficial for the formation of an SF/GO aerogel core, but also help to improve the mechanical strength of the aerogel fibers. Moreover, the prepared aerogel fibers show comparable porosity and mechanical properties with those of hollow CA/PAA fibers. More importantly, GO can dramatically improve the infrared radiative heating properties, and the surface temperature is increased by 2.6 °C after exposure to infrared radiation for 30 s, greatly higher than that of hollow fiber and SF aerogel fibers. Furthermore, the integration of hierarchically porous hollow fibers and SF/GO aerogels prevents thermal convection, decreases thermal conduction, and suppresses thermal radiation, rendering the SF/GO aerogel fiber with excellent thermal insulation performance. This work may shed light on the heat transfer mechanism of the microenvironment between the human body and textiles and pave the way for the fabrication of high-performance aerogel fibers used for personal thermal management.

Thermal insulation fibers with a Kevlar aerogel core and a porous Nomex shell

“…Nevertheless, the mechanical strength of the Kevlar-derived aerogel bers is yet to be improved, to give themselves better usability. Introducing an extra shell [29][30][31] for Kevlar aerogel bers could be a good choice.…”

Robust Silica-Bacterial Cellulose Composite Aerogel Fibers for Thermal Insulation Textile

“…The stress–strain curves of CAFs obtained from tensile tests showed that the breaking stress was in the range of 4.5–5.4 MPa. All the samples showed good tensile strength, which was much higher than that of native silica aerogel fibers, and it was comparable or even superior to those of CA/PAA-SF aerogel fibers [ 41 ] (3 MPa), SF/GO aerogel fibers [ 36 ] (3.2 MPa), and PAO@ANF aerogel fibers [ 28 ] (4.56 MPa). Moreover, the curves also showed that the elongation at break of the sample decreased from 6.8% to 1.1% with increasing precursor concentration.…”

“…Freeze spinning and wet spinning are the most commonly reported methods used to prepare aerogel fibers [ 32 ]. The raw materials of the aerogel fibers are typically synthetic polymers [ 33 ], natural polymers [ 34 ], graphene oxide [ 35 ], or their composites [ 36 ]. Although some studies have reported on inorganic oxide (e.g., SiO 2 ) aerogels, their tensile strength generally does not exceed 0.5 MPa [ 27 , 37 ], which is much lower than that of the previously mentioned fibrous aerogels.…”

“…are poured into it. Subsequently, the fiber being freeze dried to construct a gel skeleton was achieved recently [ 26 , 36 ]. The tensile strength of the obtained sheath–core coaxial aerogel fibers is significantly improved compared with that of fibrous aerogels without an outer polymer layer.…”

Printed aerogels: chemistry, processing, and applications

“…On the other hand, traditional freeze-or wet-spinning technologies can be exploited to fabricate aerogel fibres. 165 These methods can usually be used for flexible aerogels only, such as those made with graphene, 112-114 GO, 166 cellulose, [167][168][169][170] and polyimide. 165 Filaments can be fabricated using a 3D extrusion method, which is somewhat similar to the traditional spinning techniques.…”