Smart Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene Fabric with Fast Humidity Response and Joule Heating for Healthcare and Medical Therapy Applications
Xing Zhao, Li‐Ya Wang, Chunyan Tang, Xiang‐Jun Zha, Yong Liu, Baihai Su, Kai Ke, Rui‐Ying Bao, Mingbo Yang, Wei Yang
Abstract
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 Ti3C2Tx 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.