Abstract
Electronic skins with distinctive features have attracted remarkable attention from researchers because of their promising applications in flexible electronics. Here, we present novel morphologically conductive hydrogel microfibers with MXene encapsulation by using a multi-injection coflow glass capillary microfluidic chip. The coaxial flows in microchannels together with fast gelation between alginate and calcium ions ensure the formation of hollow straight as well as helical microfibers and guarantee the in situ encapsulation of MXene. The resultant hollow straight and helical MXene hydrogel microfibers were with highly controllable morphologies and package features. Benefiting from the easy manipulation of the microfluidics, the structure compositions and the sizes of MXene hydrogel microfibers could be easily tailored by varying different flow rates. It was demonstrated that these morphologically conductive MXene hydrogel microfibers were with outstanding capabilities of sensitive responses to motion and photothermal stimulations, according to their corresponding resistance changes. Thus, we believe that our morphologically conductive MXene hydrogel microfibers with these excellent features will find important applications in smart flexible electronics especially electronic skins.
Highlights
Electronic skins [1,2,3], known as stretchable electronic systems, are generally considered to be able to simulate the perception of human skin for various stimuli, such as deformation and temperature
Most of the MXene-derived electronic systems are with simple structures or morphologies because of their comparatively simple preparation process, which might restrict their performances under complex situations
A coflow microfluidic system was assembled by coaxially inserting inner spindle capillary and middle tapered injection capillary into an outer collection capillary
Summary
Electronic skins [1,2,3], known as stretchable electronic systems, are generally considered to be able to simulate the perception of human skin for various stimuli, such as deformation and temperature. Numerous electrical conductors, including ionic liquids [13, 14], liquid metals [15, 16], and other two-dimensional materials [17,18,19], have been integrated with stretchable sheets to respond to external stimuli and transmit corresponding electrical signals. Among those electrical conductors, MXenes [20, 21], as one class of two-dimensional earlytransition metal carbides/carbonitrides, have emerged with widespread attention due to their fascinating properties, such as large hydrophilic surfaces and excellent electrical/thermal conductivity. It is still a considerable challenge to fabricate novel MXene electronic systems with elaborated structure and controllable morphology for electronic skins
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