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Ultrathin MXene-aramid nanofiber electromagnetic interference shielding films with tactile sensing ability withstanding harsh temperatures

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Abstract

Ultrathin and flexible electromagnetic shielding materials hold great potential in civil and military applications. Despite tremendous research efforts, the development of advanced shielding materials is still needed to provide additional functionalities for various artificial-intelligence-driven systems, such as tactile sensing ability. Herein, a layering design strategy is proposed to fabricate ultrathin Ti3C2Tx MXene-aramid nanofiber (MA) films by a layer-by-layer assembling process. Compared to that of randomly mixed films, the designed MA films exhibited a higher EMI shielding efficiency at an ultrathin thickness of 9 µm, which increased from 26.4 to 40.7 dB, owing to the additional multiple-interface scattering mechanism. Importantly, the novel MA films displayed strong EMI shielding ability even after heating/cooling treatments within a wide temperature range of −196 to 300 °C. Moreover, the same material displayed a tensile strength of 124.1 ± 2.7 MPa and a toughness of 6.3 ± 1.1 MJ·m−3, which are approximately 9.1 times and 45 times higher than those of pure MXene films, respectively. The MA film is also capable of detecting tactile signals via the triboelectric effect. A 2 × 4 tactile sensor array was developed to achieve an accurate signal catching capability. Therefore, in addition to the shielding performance, the manifestation of tactile perception by the MA films offers exciting opportunities in the fields of soft robotics and human-machine interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51877132).

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  1. Dawei Hu and Siqi Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Thermal Aging, State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Dawei Hu, Siqi Wang, Pingkai Jiang & Xingyi Huang

  2. Hubei Engineering Research Center of RF-Microwave Technology and Application, School of Science, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Cheng Zhang

  3. College of Materials Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211100, China

    Pengshu Yi

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  1. Dawei Hu
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  2. Siqi Wang
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  3. Cheng Zhang
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Correspondence to Xingyi Huang.

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Ultrathin MXene-aramid nanofiber electromagnetic interference shielding films with tactile sensing ability withstanding harsh temperatures

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Hu, D., Wang, S., Zhang, C. et al. Ultrathin MXene-aramid nanofiber electromagnetic interference shielding films with tactile sensing ability withstanding harsh temperatures. Nano Res. 14, 2837–2845 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3297-z

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