Bacterial cellulose/MXene hybrid aerogels for photodriven shape-stabilized composite phase change materials

Abstract

The development of solar thermal energy storage technologies associated with phase change materials (PCMs) can greatly improve the utilization efficiency of solar energy, which is of significance to alleviate the global energy shortage. A large number of photodriven shape-stabilized composite PCMs has been exploited in recent decades, while the majorities of studies have demonstrated that the properties of composite PCMs are improved at the expense of energy storage density owing to that the introduced functional materials are substituted for a considerable portion of phase change matrix. Here, three-dimensional (3D) porous skeletons composed of bacterial cellulose (BC) as the supporting material and MXene as the photothermal material are introduced into polyethylene glycol (PEG) to fabricate composite PCMs with excellent comprehensive properties. The obtained composite PCMs show excellent shape stability, efficient photothermal conversion ability and extremely high energy storage capacity, which sheds substantial light on the efficient utilization of solar energy.