Waterproof MXene-decorated wood-pulp fabrics for high-efficiency electromagnetic interference shielding and Joule heating

Although high-performance electromagnetic shields have been developed widely due to the increased electromagnetic interference (EMI) pollution, it is still desirable to construct novel EMI shields by using renewable biomass substrate and further introduce new functionalities to broaden their application scenarios. Newly 2D transition-metal carbides/nitrides (MXene) shows obvious superiority over graphene for the fabrication of multifunctional EMI shields owing to their superb electrical conductivity and tunable surface chemistry. Herein, sustainable MXene-decorated EMI shields were fabricated by depositing highly conductive Ti3C2Tx MXene networks onto wood-pulp fabric grid (FG) followed by hydrophobic methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) coating with multi-scaled roughness through a simple vacuum-filtration approach and sol-gel process. The resultant MTMS-M/FG possessed not only superior EMI-shielding effectiveness up to ~57.8–90.2 dB and outstanding waterproof feature with water contact-angle of ~132–138°, but also an impressive performance stability under cycled bending and torsion on account of their excellent mechanical flexibility and ideal structural stability. Moreover, the MTMS-M/FG showed a satisfactory low-voltage-driven Joule-heating performance with the saturated temperature of ~40–95 °C at constant 1–4 V voltage, as well as enhanced thermal stability. The above impressive functions together with simple and scalable fabrication technique would promote the possible practical applications of such unique materials.